


Nothing Like a Round on 'The Krypton Factor'

by neverfaraway



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, F/M, Found Family, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pat and the Captain Learn To Use Their Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: Wedding season approaches at Button House and, for once, everything is going off without a hitch. Of course, there’s the slight issue of Pat’s recent epiphany about his sexuality, Kitty’s determination to get her hands on as much badly-written erotica as possible, and the peasants becoming decidedly revolting. Still, if only the ghosts can refrain from murdering any of the builders, Alison is fairly sure they can pull this off.Or, Pat and the Captain negotiate coming out, even if it's only to each other.
Relationships: The Captain/Pat (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 159





	Nothing Like a Round on 'The Krypton Factor'

**Author's Note:**

> Those of you who also grew up watching _The Krypton Factor_ will notice I've played fast and loose with the order of the rounds for thematic purposes.

**(i) General Knowledge**

It was Wednesday, which meant it was Learn a New Skill! Day. Pat had insisted on the exclamation mark; he had a way of pronouncing things which made it impossible not to hear the punctuation. 

In the drawing room, Robin was describing the most efficient way to skin a gazelle; this was the latest in his series of related presentations, which had begun with deer and progressed through the evisceration of a range of mammals both living and extinct. These talks tended to have a common theme - “Well, you got to start with the bum,” - and Alison tried, whenever possible, to find excuses not to attend. Which was why, on that particular Wednesday afternoon, she was hiding in the Green Study, as Fanny insisted on her calling it, eating a packet of chocolate digestives and playing Words With Friends on her phone. 

“Hello, Alison. I wonder if I could trouble you for a bit of advice?”

Alison hastily wiped crumbs off her jumper and sat up, shuffling a pile of papers in an attempt to look busy. “Sorry, Pat, what was that? It’s just I’m in the middle of all this paperwork.”

“No rest for the wicked, eh?” Pat said, the rest of his body materialising through the door. “I was hoping to have a chat, but I can see you’re busy."

Alison cast an eye over the desk, with its strata of unopened bills and biscuit crumbs, and wondered why anyone would think she was qualified to dole out advice. The deference the ghosts seemed to cling to, just because she happened to still be alive, never got any less weird. She put the pile of paperwork to one side and surreptitiously slid the packet of biscuits behind the desk tidy, out of sight. “No, no, Pat. It can wait. Come in. Not sure I’m qualified, but I’ll do my best.”

“Well, it’s a bit of a personal matter. I thought of trying to talk to the others about it, but...”

“Yep,” Alison said, imagining trying to have a delicate conversation with Thomas or, god forbid, Julian. “Completely understand. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about Sam and Claire’s wedding.”

“Right,” Alison said. “I’ve got to say, Pat, I’m disappointed in you. I would have thought, out of anyone, you’d have been a bit more open-minded."

Pat pushed his glasses up his nose and seemed a little affronted. “Now, come on, Alison. I might have died before you were born, but I don’t like to think of myself as old-fashioned. I’m not here to complain."

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“I bought Bronski Beat’s first album just before I popped my clogs, you know,” he confided, meaningfully. “I thought Jimmy Sommerville had a lovely voice."

“Right, then,” said Alison, not particularly enlightened by this line of reasoning. “So, what about Sam and Claire?"

“Well, it was a smashing wedding. Great party. Eye-opening, you might say.”

Alison had been too preoccupied with ensuring the night went off without a hitch to pay much attention to what Pat had been up to, but she’d given in to Kitty’s demands to dance in time to watch Robin do battle with the disco lights. 

“Might you?” she said. “I’m not completely sure I’m following you with this one, Pat.”

“Well,” he said, in a tone that suggested he might have turned a bit pink, had he been able to. “The thing is, Carol and me went to a party, once. Everyone got a bit squiffy on Mateus Rosé, someone put their keys in a bowl, one thing led to another… And, when I woke up the next morning, it wasn’t someone else’s wife I’d gone to bed with.”

“Oh,” said Alison. Then, as realisation dawned, “Oh!"

“I hadn’t thought about it in years, but it occurred to me, while we were all dancing at the wedding, that I might have missed out on things, a bit. Sexuality-wise.”

He said this as though he expected Fanny to come sailing through the wall to lecture him about propriety, and seemed relieved when Alison merely smiled at him instead.

“Well, that’s wonderful, Pat. Or, not wonderful...?” she added hastily, when she saw the expression behind Pat’s enormous glasses. 

“Oh, no. I’m glad to be gay, as Tom Robinson would say **1**. Well, _bisexual_ ,” he clarified, pronouncing it the way he pronounced words he followed with a cheery ' _that’s French!_ '. "It just seems a bit after-the-fact. I mean, what’s the point in fancying anyone when you’re too dead to do anything about it?”

This was the most despondent Alison had ever heard him. She thought back to the wedding and considered the guests who might have prompted this sudden epiphany. “Was it Sam and Claire’s friend?” she guessed. "The one with the glittery suit? What was his name… Marcus? Marco?”

“Mateusz,” Pat supplied. “No, afraid not.”

“Was it the other bloke in the nice suit? Was it Sam’s dad?"

“Alison!”

“Sorry, sorry. Oh, Pat,” she said, with dawning horror, “surely not Thomas?”

“Honestly, Alison,” Pat said, looking decidedly embarrassed, “what do you take me for? Perhaps it’s not important after all. Maybe I should just go and make sure Robin’s not arguing with Julian about the Illuminati, again…”

Alison waved a hand at him to sit down. “No, no! I’ve almost got it!” she said, while Pat sank weakly into his chair. “Mike was DJ-ing, and the vicar had gone home, Julian was off doing God-knows-what to the bridesmaids, and Robin was… actually, I don’t know where Robin was, so that just leaves Thomas and the Captain -“ Alison clapped a hand over her mouth, while Pat gave her a small, embarrassed smile, as if to say ‘surprise!'.

“Oh, Pat,” she said. It sounded rather more commiserating than she’d intended.

“Well, I feel silly for saying anything, it’s not as if anything’s going to come of it -"

“But you fancy the Captain,” she said, clapping a hand over her mouth again to stop such ridiculous sentences falling out of it. “Are you planning on telling him?”

Pat looked at her as though she’d asked him to volunteer for a sky dive without a parachute. “Don’t be ridiculous, Alison!”

Alison considered the way the Captain had spluttered with indignation, the previous week, when she'd accidentally implied that he might have enjoyed Robin’s Film Club nomination for reasons not entirely pertaining to the plot. She’d taken back her casual assertion that the sight of 300 scantily clad Spartans was enough to make anyone feel well-disposed towards Gerard Butler’s acting, but he’d still refused to speak to her for the best part of the rest of the week. He’d settled, instead, for stomping into her peripheral vision a number of times a day to relay haughty instructions via one of the others, such as, “Mary, please inform Alison that it was agreed that I should have access to the television at sixteen hundred hours, and that I have already missed a good ten minutes of ‘Battlefield Britain'.” 

“No,” she said. “Perhaps not.”

“It’s an idle thought, in any case,” Pat said, with a wistful smile. “A fleeting fancy. As Michael Jackson would say, best for everyone to blame it on the boogie and say no more about it.”

“Right,” Alison agreed, dubiously. “Best for everyone.”

**(ii) Mental Agility**

_Two Months Later_

Alison had asked Pat to assemble the ghosts in drawing room before Food Club, so she could show them her solution to the books-on-music-stands situation. It had been necessitated by an altercation between Kitty and Julian the week before, when Julian had refused to turn the next page of _Lady Vivian Defies a Duke_ while Alison was busy on the phone to a wedding client. It had resulted in Kitty fleeing to the attic in tears and refusing to come down until Alison had promised to read her the whole of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ without leaving out any of the naughty bits. 

“I believe Pat specified seventeen hundred hours sharp,” said the Captain, rocking back on his heels, when the clock chimed the hour.

“Sorry, sorry,” said Thomas, tumbling into the room with Kitty and Mary in tow. “We were unavoidably detained in the garden.”

“We’s been playing hide-and-seeks again,” Mary said. “’S getting good, now I counts the numbers what's bigger than fives.”

“No harm done,” Pat interjected, before the Captain or Fanny could sally forth on the importance of punctuality. “Alison, what have you brought us all together to see?”

“Well, it’s not something you need to see,” she said, tapping a couple of buttons on her phone, “so much as _hear_.”

There was a pause, and then, out of the speakers Alison had placed on the mantelpiece, came the sound of a man’s voice, rumbling portentously: “ _Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that_.”

“ _A Christmas Carol_!” said Pat and the Captain in unison. “I do love a bit of Dickens,” added Pat. 

“Oh, a dramatic reading!” cried Kitty, clapping her hands. “Is it Michael doing the funny voices? Is he hiding?” 

She started to peer underneath the sofa as though she expected to find Mike crouched beneath it with a paperback. 

“No, Kitty, it’s an audiobook.” Alison turned her phone to show the screen to the ghosts. “It’s playing through the speakers.”

“Got blue teeth,” said Robin sagely.

“Bluetooth, yes. It’s Stephen Fry doing the reading, it’s pretty good.”

“Alison,” said Mary, raising a hand. “How did you traps the tiny man inside your enchanted mirror?”

“It’s my phone, Mary. And he isn’t trapped, it’s a recording. Not just this one - there are thousands of books you can listen to.”

“So many mens insides the mirror,” Mary muttered fretfully. 

“Look, alright - Fanny, what’s your favourite book?”

“My favourite book? Well, that’s a rather personal question, I’m sure I don’t know -“

“I’ve got a few suggestions,” interrupted Julian, waggling his eyebrows. “Roth had a good line in filth disguised as literature, let’s search him up."

“Let’s not,” said Alison. 

“Ooh, I know!” Pat said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “What about _The Hobbit_? Everyone loves _The Hobbit_ , don’t they?”

“Yeah, if they’re a big speccy nerd,” said Julian, rolling his eyes. 

“Now, look here,” said the Captain, pointing the swagger stick in Julian’s direction, while Pat stepped between them and flapped his hands in an appeal for calm.

“Does the miniature reader possess any volumes of poetry?” Thomas asked querulously, bringing a halt to the argument before it could properly begin. 

“I’m sure I can find some,” said Alison, gratefully. “Anything in particular?”

“Does it possess any of _my_ poetry?”

“Ah,” said Alison. “Well, I’m not sure it’s popular enough - I mean. What I _mean_ to say, is that I’ve only downloaded novels, so far. I’m sure there’s plenty of poetry out there, too.”

“What ‘bout books on Moonah?” Robin demanded. “Moonah landing, Moonah stone, that sort of thing.”

“There's lots of non-fiction about all sorts of things,” Alison assured him. “Captain, anything you’d like to read?”

The Captain flexed his hands on the swagger stick and frowned severely. “Well. Having command of a body of men was rather time consuming, you know, Alison. Not a lot of time for stories, I’m afraid.”

“What about when you were a little lad?” Pat asked. “Wasn’t there anything you liked to read?"

“Oh. Well. I suppose one did read boys’ own adventures, tales of derring-do, that sort of thing. I do recall rather enjoying _Treasure Island_.”

“There you go!” Pat said, beaming up at him. “I take it, Alison, that you’d like us to listen to books in our own time, from now on, to save you having to turn the pages?”

“Well, it’s not just that. You know I love to read with you, Kitty,” Alison said, heading Kitty’s objections off at the pass. “It’s just, what with all the renovation work, I hate leaving you hanging all the time.”

“Yesterday I waited five hours to see whether Lucius Crawford, the dashing industrialist, would propose to Selena, the poor, beautiful vicar’s daughter,” said Kitty, smiling distantly at the memory. “He did,” she added, lest anyone be concerned about the poor Selena’s fate.

“Well, exactly. So, what do you think? Mike found a load of old MP3 players on eBay: if you each choose a book, I can load them up and you can listen in your own time, at your own pace, I’ll just need to press play.” Alison glanced around at the assembled ghosts, imagining the hours of peace and quiet it might buy her, if they went for it. She added, hopefully, “and possibly in your own rooms?”

“Well, I can assure you that I will not be wallowing in the kind of filth I have seen others indulging in, of late."

“Oh, come on, Fanny,” said Julian. “Who among us didn’t pass round a dog-eared and slightly damp copy of Lady Chatterley under the bed covers in the dormitory after lights out. We all know you had a sneaky look. Pitiful stuff; hardly the Marquis de Sade.”

“I do not wish to be assaulted by such obscenity in my own home!”

Alison took a calming breath. “No one’s asking you to, Fanny. I promise you - you can read whatever you like. How about a bit of Jane Austen to start with?”

Fanny sniffed. “Certainly not. A lady does not betray an interest in the size of a gentleman’s -“

“Julian!” said Alison sharply, as he began to open his mouth.

“ - income,” concluded Fanny.

Pat clapped his hands in the way he often did when he wanted to bring proceedings to a close, without having to explicitly tell anyone to shut it. 

“Well, I think this all sounds brilliant. Shall we all say a big thank you to Alison, guys?” There was a chorus of subdued gratitude, and Pat turned to her expectantly. “When can we start?"

Despite Fanny’s antipathy, the audiobooks were almost too successful as a ploy by which Alison hoped to gain a measure of peace and quiet. The next morning, she set up a couple of tiny speakers connected to an antiquated MP3 player in each of the ghosts’ rooms and loaded onto them the books they’d selected the night before; in Robin’s case, this had been a work of dubious provenance on the extra-terrestrial origins of the Great Pyramids, while the Captain had hemmed and hawed his way around requesting to re-read _Treasure Island_. Alison had caught Pat giving him an encouraging thumbs up while Kitty tried to ask whether there were any rude bits in _Wuthering Heights_ without making it sound like the request for soft pornography that it obviously was. She’d even taken a speaker down into the basement at Pat’s request and set the plague victims up with a playlist of history podcasts.

She and Mike spent most of the rest of the morning attempting to peel desiccated wallpaper off the walls in the dining room. When they stopped for a cup of tea at 11 o’clock and Mike asked her to check there were no ghosts occupying the downstairs loo, so he could have a wee without worrying about Mary staring at his dangly bits, it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen or heard from any of the ghosts since she left them upstairs earlier that morning. 

“I think it might have worked,” she said, listening carefully for the sound of bickering. “I think we’ve finally cracked it.”

“What?”

“Something to keep them busy. I haven’t heard a thing all morning.”

“So, there’s definitely no one in the loo, then?”

By the early afternoon, Alison was starting to suspect that it was all a bit too good to be true. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Mike had had an uninterrupted day to themselves; in fact, they hadn’t, ever, since moving in. Something about the house in the ghosts’ absence felt unnatural, somehow; empty, in a way she would never have expected.

“I’m not sure I like it,” she said, eventually, when they sat down for fish and chips at the kitchen table, just after the sun had set. She’d done a quick lap of the upper floor an hour ago, just to check that no one had managed to get themselves into mischief, and had been perturbed by the eerie sense of calm, the only sound the muffled murmur of words seeping under each of the bedroom doors. 

“Well, it probably won’t last, so maybe we should just make the most of it?”

“Oh, yeah?” Alison said, putting down the last of her battered sausage and licking her fingers clean. “What did you have in mind?”

The following morning, Alison woke slowly, indulged in a long, luxurious stretch, and basked for a moment in the warmth Mike radiated like an enormous hot water bottle. He was snoring gently into his pillow. She took a moment to watch him sleep, feeling lucky and happy and all of the things she’d finally started to feel, now that Button House had started to become a bit more of a home. 

“Good morning, dearest Alison,” said Thomas, from his position beside the bed. 

“Thomas!” Alison resisted the urge to dive beneath the bedclothes and settled for yanking them higher, tugging them up to her chin. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I came to thank you, Alison, for the gift you have given me,” Thomas replied. “Never before have the words of the poets rung so clear and true; never before have I been so transported!”

Alison carried out a swift inventory and realised that her clothes were scattered about the room, definitely not within arm’s reach. “You enjoyed the book, then?”

“Enjoyed it? Madam, it filled me with a joy so profound, I have barely the words with which to describe it.”

She realised belatedly that her bra was dangling jauntily from the corner of the wardrobe door, just behind Thomas’ head.

“That’s lovely, Thomas. Really, I’m very glad you enjoyed it. But, er… do you think you could bugger off, for a bit? Late night and all, you know how it is.”

Thomas cast an anguished glance at the back of Mike’s head, while Mike mumbled something incomprehensible about gooseberries. “Of course, dear lady. I shall leave you to your rest.”

“Thank you!” she called, as he retreated through the bedroom wall. 

“Who was that?” Mike asked, without opening his eyes.

“Just Thomas, coming to say good morning and thank me for the audiobooks.”

“Everything’s back to normal, then?”

“Looks that way,” Alison said, pulling the covers over her head. “Business as usual.”

**(iii) Observation**

After the success of Sam and Claire’s nuptials - which had occasioned the Captain to strut about making pointed little comments about having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, as though he were personally responsible for saving the business on Alison and Mike’s behalf - Martin had starting putting the word out, offering up Button House to clients with an interest in unusual venues, and people who liked the idea of a country house wedding but didn’t quite have the cash for one whose load-bearing walls didn’t groan alarmingly when more than two people attempted to stand in the middle of an upstairs room.

The sudden improvement in their fortunes came just in time to pay for a crucial spot of building work. If they were going to be doing ceremonies as well as receptions, guests would need to be able to move about the house without fear of falling through holes in the floorboards - such as on the East landing - or disappearing beneath a shower of crumbling plaster whenever they closed a door slightly too firmly - a hazard in the downstairs lavatory. Martin had been very clear about this, the last time he’d lectured them about the importance of flow.

“I want you to promise you won’t do anything to the builders, this time,” Alison implored, in the drawing room, the day before the builders were due to arrive.

“We done nothing,” muttered Robin. "They get in way, make mess.”

“Yes,” said Fanny, looking thoroughly displeased to find herself in agreement. “I hope you’ll insist, this time, that they take off their boots before walking on the library carpet. In fact, I would be inclined to insist that no tradesman enter the library, at all.”

Alison sighed. “Alright. I’ll tell them that some rooms are out of bounds.”

“And chess board.”

“Yes, and the chess board. Anything else?”

“Perhaps you might mention,” said the Captain, “that despite the improvement in the weather, there is still a standard of dress to which they are expected to adhere. We don’t want a repeat of Christmas, 1996.”

The ghosts muttered amongst themselves darkly. 

“Christmas, 1996?” Alison asked Pat. He winced.

“Burst pipe under the dining room. One of the plumbers bent down to lift a floorboard, just as Fanny was coming round the corner. Builder’s bum, right in the face. Took three days for her to come round.”

“I won’t have them parading about bare-chested, either,” said Fanny, with an expression of immense distaste. “Honestly, one sniff of sunshine and the tradesmen of Hertfordshire deem it necessary to whip off their shirts, as though the world needs to see their sweaty, bestial flesh on display. There’s simply no regard for propriety.”

The Captain’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat. “No, no. Absolutely. Can’t have that.”

“Alright, fine. You do all owe me a favour, by the way, since you all seem to be enjoying the audiobooks,” Alison said crossly. "How many times have you listened to _Captain Corelli’s Mandolin_ now, Pat? Is it twice, or three times?”

Pat pushed his glasses up his nose. “It's a modern classic, Alison, I’ll have you know."

Alison rolled her eyes. "Right then. No mess, no going in the library, and no nudity. Just the requests any perfectly sane employer would make.”

“And no chess.”

“Yes, thank you, Robin. No chess."

The builders’ arrival went rather more smoothly this time around. It helped that a recommendation from a friend of Mike’s had put them in touch with a company from Essex who didn’t mind the drive for the promise of a bit of extra cash, as long as it was handed over firmly off the books. Julian approved of anything smacking of tax evasion purely on principle and congratulated Alison warmly on diddling the Inland Revenue. It also helped that they hadn’t been warned off Button House by Terry, unlike every other building firm in the Home Counties. They pulled up in a couple of white transit vans on Monday morning, accepted Alison’s offer of a cup of tea, and set about unloading their equipment.

“They’ll be on a tight schedule,” said Pat worriedly, watching from the drawing room window. “We’ve only two months ’til the next wedding.”

“Well, then,” said the Captain. “Every man - and woman; apologies, Fanny - will do his duty and make sure they’re able to go about their business with maximum efficiency.”

Fanny tutted scornfully. “I’ve yet to meet a tradesman with more than a passing interest in meeting a deadline.”

“Well, by Jove, we’ll make sure they do,” the Captain said, with a steely-eyed glare in the direction of the builders’ vans. “I say, what on earth is Robin up to?”

Robin was leaping about beside the open doors of the nearest van, gesticulating happily at the equipment the builders were in the process of unloading. It became clear, as they lifted it from the bed of the truck onto a trolley, that said equipment - “Infrared heater,” said Pat, nodding sagely, “for drying out the plaster,” - appeared to be the largest free-standing lamp any of the ghosts had ever seen. One side of it was made up entirely of panels of light bulbs. It looked rather like the lighting rig at the last pop concert Pat had attended before his death **2**.

Robin trailed the builders as they wheeled the contraption into the house, an expression of intense, rapturous anticipation upon his face. 

“Oh no,” said Pat.

“That’s five million watts of electric light. Silly bugger’ll kill himself all over again,” Julian said, sounding as though he was greatly looking forward to it.

“Robin!” The Captain set off at a march in the direction of the dining room. “Robin, I command you to step away from the electrical lighting device!"

It took an hour and a half to persuade Robin to forego his battle of wills with the largest electric light he had ever seen. Alison, alerted to the danger by a breathless Pat, who had sprinted the length of the east wing to fetch her, had begun by appealing to his sense of honour.

“What me care if no more weddings?” Robin muttered mutinously, flexing his hands in the direction of the lamp.

“No more weddings,” Alison said, “means no more house, because we won’t be able to afford the repairs.”

“Been through this,” said Robin, shrugging philosophically. “House come, house go.”

“Well, fine,” Alison said. “No builders, no wedding. No wedding, no more awful TV programmes about ancient aliens.”

The other ghosts drew back with murmurs of appreciation. Robin considered Alison’s terms, glowering at the heater. 

“Drive hard bargain,” he said, eventually, lowering his hands. “Win this round.”

By the time Alison collapsed into bed that evening, she was thoroughly exhausted. Mike was already snoozing, an open bag of crisps balanced on his chest and the closing credits of ‘Love Island’ playing quietly on the broken TV. One third of the screen showed nothing but horizontal lime-green lines against a black background, and it buzzed alarmingly if anyone got near it while wearing anything made of metal. Alison took off her earrings before she walked past it and threw herself face down on the bed, hoping the mattress would open up and swallow her, so she could sleep not caring whether Kitty was perched at the end of the bed waiting to talk to her again about her desire for Alison and Mike to start having babies. 

“Everything cool?” Mike asked, without opening his eyes. 

“Well, Robin’s sulking over a game of chess with Julian, Thomas is performing monologues from Shakespeare for Fanny, Kitty and Mary - still not sure Mary’s entirely happy with the concept of theatre - and Pat and the Captain are upstairs watching _Band of Brothers_. Oh, bollocks.”

With a groan, she extracted herself from the cosy embrace of the mattress and clambered off the bed.

“Wha’s it?” Mike mumbled, the crisp packet rising and falling and threatening to spill crumbs onto the duvet.

“Promised Pat a new audiobook,” she said, other way out of the door. "Won’t be long.”

Behind her, Mike had already started to snore.

She made her way to the Green Study, taking the long way round to avoid the drawing room and one of Julian’s interminable after-dinner talks on parliamentary procedure. The rest of the house was quiet and dark in a way she used to find vaguely perturbing, but now seemed comfortable, like pushing her feet into a favourite pair of slippers. It almost seemed, these days, that if she reached out into the darkness, the house might reach out to hug her back. No doubt Fanny would have called this crass sentimentality, but there was something comforting about knowing which stairs would creak when she stepped on them, and anticipating the lurch of the floorboards at the end of the first floor landing moments before before they groaned beneath her. It was nice to feel like this was a place to which she might, one day, belong. She slipped inside the study, unplugged an iPod from its charger, and set out for the TV room, where she’d offer to set it up for Pat, if he liked. She still owed him for talking Julian round from punching Thomas in the nose, when he’d called Thomas’ latest poem asinine, and Thomas had declared him to be an uncultured buffoon.

When she reached the landing outside the TV room, the door was ajar; inside, orchestral music emanated softly from the TV, and below it she could hear the low murmur of voices. She popped her head around the door and paused, surprised. The closing credits of an episode of _Band of Brothers_ were scrolling unattended; on the sofa, side by side, Pat and the Captain were talking quietly. The Captain’s shoulders had softened from their usual ramrod line of awkward discomfort, but Alison imagined it must still have been like sharing a sofa with a particularly grumpy ironing board.

“… after it was all over, clearing unexploded ordnance,” the Captain was saying. “Not much of a war, by anyone’s standards."

“Rubbish,” Pat murmured, nudging the Captain’s arm with his elbow in a gentle, familiar sort of way. Alison watched the Captain recoil and imagined him tightening his grip on the swagger stick, preparing to box Pat’s ears for his impertinence. “Everyone’d love to hear about it. What about doing a talk about it, next time?”

“A reading from the memoirs of a smelly old walrus? I think not, Patrick.”

“Come on, Cap. We’re all really sorry about all that.”

The Captain made a noise that indicated he remained unconvinced.

“Well, bugger everybody else,” Pat said, with conviction, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You’ve never told a soul about any of it, and I’d be honoured, if and when you felt up to sharing.” He gave the Captain’s arm another companionable nudge, which Alison thought must definitely have been pushing his luck. "You just say the word.”

The Captain cleared his throat and said, stiffly, “Well, I - thank you, Patrick."

Alison vacillated in the doorway, weighing up the likelihood of being able to retreat silently down the landing without being detected, against knocking sharply on the door and pretending she hadn’t been eavesdropping in the first place. For all that the Captain had thawed towards her in the balmy afterglow of Sam and Claire’s wedding, Alison wished to avoid the row that would inevitably ensue, when he realised she’d trespassed on this moment of... well, moment of what, exactly? While she hesitated, the Captain said something low and, apparently, amusing below the swell of the music, and Pat chuckled in reply. 

She reached forward, hand on the doorknob, and placed the iPod gently on top of the dresser by the door, careful not to make a sound. When she glanced in the direction of the sofa, Pat had settled in to watch the next episode of _Band of Brothers_ and the Captain had turned to him, then stopped, as though he’d intended to speak and then forgotten what it was he’d wanted to say. She watched him fix Pat with a bewildered, affronted sort of stare. His gaze lingered on the sight of Pat’s round, oblivious, kindly face in profile, and his shoulders rose into a tense, brittle barricade, stiff with the effort of maintaining the safe, unremarkable span of cushion that lay between them on the sofa. He looked petrified and not entirely taken by surprise.

Ah, thought Alison.

It was sweet, she supposed. It certainly made sense of the Captain’s sudden incoherence when he began an announcement at the start of last week’s Film Club with, “Patrick and I - that is to say, myself, along with Patrick - have decided," and then had to clear his throat and prevaricate for almost a minute before he was able to tell them what it was that he and Pat had actually discussed. 

She crept down the landing avoiding all the squeaky floorboards and made it back to the bedroom without bumping into any of the other ghosts, before slipping into bed and tucking her cold feet into the warm space behind Mike’s calves. She slipped an arm around his waist and hugged him tightly. 

“Y’r cold,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Everything alright?”

“I’lll tell you in the morning,” she whispered, before falling fast asleep.

In the morning, the news of Alison’s discovery was forgotten due to the need to clear the ghost pigeon out of the bathroom before either of them could attempt to have a shower. By the time she remembered what she’d been meaning to tell Mike, he’d gone out on an errand, so Alison took herself off to the kitchen and decided to tick off a few of the more horrible jobs she’d been saving up for a day when there really was nothing else that needing doing that she could pretend was more important. 

“Alison!” cried Thomas, tumbling into the kitchen while Alison took a well-earned break from trying to clean the pigeon droppings off the light fittings in the dining room, some hours later. “Alison, you must come quickly! We’re about to be murdered in our beds!”

“It’s half eleven in the morning,” said Alison, sipping her tea. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, Thomas, but you’re already dead.”

“You don’t understand! The downtrodden masses have risen in the drawing room, again.”

Alison put down her mug with a sigh. "Lead the way, then.”

In the drawing room, they found the Captain, Pat, Julian and Fanny facing down the massed numbers of the plague dead, who had congregated by the grand piano and looked far angrier than they had when they’d found out about Mick and his flea-infested holiday gifts. Kitty was sobbing noisily on the chaise longue, and Mary was sitting beside her, watching the proceedings like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Ah! Alison!” Julian said, gesticulating at the villagers. “Tell these peasants to get back in the basement where they belong!”

“C’mon, guys!" Alison said, while the plague victims made rude gestures at Julian that she would normally be inclined to say he richly deserved. “Not this again.”

“We find that term offensive, actually,” said Walter. 

“What, peasants?” Julian scoffed. "What else do you want to be called?”

“I can think of an epithet or two,” said Fanny.

“Now, come on, everybody. I’m sure we can find a way of discussing things sensibly,” said Pat, stepping between them.

“But they threatened to cut Kitty’s head off because she asked them if they’d like to come to Film Club,” said Thomas, in a tone of deep indignation. 

“Did you?” asked Alison.

The plague victims shuffled and muttered amongst themselves. “Maybe,” said Walter. “A bit,” added John, nodding sheepishly.

“Well, you can stick your Film Club,” said a voice from the back. “’S all just bourgeois propaganda of the property-owning classes, anyway!”

The plague victims rolled their eyes. “Shut up, Nigel!” 

“He’s not wrong, though,” said Margaret, Walter’s wife. “It is bourgeois propaganda, and you can stick it up your -”

“Yes,” Alison interrupted firmly. “We all get the picture." 

“I think, maybe, we all just need to calm down a bit,” said Pat, a little desperately.

“Patrick’s right,” said the Captain. “There’s no point attempting to negotiate with an enemy who's throwing around Bolshevist nonsense about cutting off people’s heads.”

“The thing is,” Margaret informed Alison calmly, “the workers united will never be divided.”

“What work?” Julian demanded. “You spend your entire miserable lives - deaths - stuck in the basement!”

“Well, that’s exactly what a toff like him would say,” muttered Nigel, to a chorus of agreement from the rest of the villagers.

“Look,” said Alison, “where’s all this coming from? I thought you were happy in the basement.”

“It seems someone,” said Julian, turning an accusatory eye on Pat, “has been filling their heads with thoughts and ideas and other things too dangerous for the plebs to be allowed to indulge in willy-nilly.”

“Is this what all the history podcasts were about?” Alison asked Pat. 

Pat shuffled his feet. “Well, I thought they might like to understand a bit more about the world and how it’s changed since - well, since they all died.”

“We learned a lot from that cross posh bloke and all his friends,” said Walter. 

“You mean, Melvyn Bragg?” Alison asked, bewildered. “ _In Our Time_ made you all want to cut Kitty’s head off?”

Kitty dissolved into another round of tears.

“Well, according to a Marxist interpretation of the events of the last three hundred years, she’s a beneficiary of capitalist oppression, innit?” said Walter, casting an uncomfortable glance in Kitty’s direction. 

“I’ll show you oppression, matey,” said Julian, rolling up his sleeves.

“Oi!” shouted John. “Some of us are Chartists! We just want to be enfranchised!”

“Actually,” said Margaret, “I’m a suffragist.”

“Yeah, well, we’re an anarcho-communist people’s collective,” said Walter, indicating the rest of the villagers. “And you lot,” he said, pointing at the ghosts, “have unequal access to the communal resources of this… um. This community.”

“Meaning?” Alison demanded.

“Meaning,” said Pat, his eyes wide behind his glasses, “that they came up here wanting to seize the means of production and cut Kitty’s head off - sorry, Kitty - but we’ve established that no one’s sure what the means of production are, really, in the context of being dead and confined to Button House.”

Alison strove valiantly not to roll her eyes. “So, what do you want?”

“The right to utilise the communal facilities on a part-time basis,” said John.

“The vote,” said Margaret.

“And his head on a spike!” shouted Nigel, pointing at Julian, earning a ragged cheer from the villagers. 

“You see,” sneered Julian. “They are _peasants_ , and they are _extremely_ revolting. Bring back the feudal system, that’s what I say!"

“No one’s head will be going on any spikes!” Alison shouted. The ghosts fell silent. “Kitty, can you please stop crying? And Julian, will you stop trying to antagonise everyone?”

“Well, why don’t we lay the blame where it really lies?” Julian demanded, turning on Pat again. “If this lefty, quisling little weasel hadn’t been sneaking down there and talking to them about their rights, teaching them the ‘Internationale', we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

“Now, look here,” said the Captain, brandishing his stick in Julian’s direction. “There’s absolutely no call for that sort of language.”

“Yeah,” said Pat. “Naff off, you Tory pillock.”

“Guys, guys!” Alison pleaded. “Seriously, stop it. It’s completely reasonable that you want access to a bit more of the house,” she began, only to be interrupted by Fanny, who snorted incongruously and said, “Over my dead body.”

“Unlikely to be a winning argument in our present situation,” contributed Thomas, unhelpfully.

“Yes, thank you, Thomas. Look,” Alison said, to the villagers, “we’ll find a solution. But the only way we’ll make any progress is by talking, not going around threatening to dismember Julian. Tempting though it is, sometimes,” she added, glaring at Julian, who had been sticking two fingers up at the villagers behind her back.

“We want to go in the garden,” said Walter, while the rest of the villagers nodded their agreement. “That’s our final line. We won’t accept anything less than access to the garden, whenever we want it.”

“Except when there’s a wedding on,” suggested the Captain, looking horrified by the thought of plague victims mingling with the guests.

“Well, yeah, I suppose. ‘Cept when there’s a wedding. But whenever we like, the rest of the time.”

“Done,” said Alison hastily, before anyone else could interject. “I’d shake hands, but…”

“Deal’s a deal,” said Walter. “Not sure we want to go ‘round shaking hands with your sort, anyway.”

“Wouldn’t piss on you poshos if you was on fire,” added Nigel cheerfully. 

“Well, glad that’s sorted,” said Alison. “Now, er, how would you feel about going back down to the basement?”

“Yeah, suppose so,” said Walter. The villagers mumbled their agreement. “Well. See you in the garden, then.”

“Yep,” Alison said, waving them off. “See you.”

The villagers shuffled down the passageway and into the basement with a minimum of argument, though Nigel drew his finger across his throat in Julian’s direction with a gleam of gleeful intent in his eye that presaged problems in the future. Alison decided she was too cross to care. She rounded on the ghosts with what she hoped was an expression of considerable fury. Judging by the way Pat and the Captain shrank away from her and Julian cast his eyes to the carpet, she assumed it was successful. 

“I'm trying to clean five centuries of pigeon droppings off the chandeliers, and you decide to incite a civil war!” She turned her gaze on them one by one. Kitty, hiccupping on the chaise longue, burst into tears again. “Oh, Kitty, I’m not angry with you. With you, though,” she added, pointing at Julian as she sat down at Kitty’s side, “I definitely am.”

“Right,” said the Captain. “Well. It seems the situation is under control. I’ll leave this in your hands, Alison.”

The Captain clicked his heels and made to exit the drawing room. Alison watched, surreptitiously, as Pat attempted to intercept him, resulting in them performing an awkward little dance in the doorway, while the Captain tried to retreat and Pat refused to let him.

“Thanks,” Pat mumbled earnestly, not entirely looking the Captain in the eye. “For, er, sticking up for me, back there, with Julian.”

The Captain’s gaze was fixed somewhere on the wall over Pat’s left shoulder. “Nothing I wouldn’t do for - well. That is, think nothing of it.” 

He executed a smart manoeuvre that left him dodging the hand Pat attempted to extend between them and fled for the garden, leaving Pat floundering in the doorway in his wake.

“They’s quarrelled,” said Mary in a stage whisper. “A bad ‘un, an' alls, I reckons."

“Well, in the absence of the Captain,” said Julian, eyeing the doorway leading to the basement, “perhaps I, with my extensive experience of dealing - in one way or another - with industrial disputes, should step up to the plate, as it were, and continue the negotiations on our behalf.”

“You’ve done enough damage,” Alison replied. “Can’t you go and find some orphans to bully, or money to launder, or something?”

“Have it your way,” Julian said, and stalked off to sprawl in the chair by the chess board. 

“There, there, Kitty,” Alison said, watching Pat wander over to the window, his shoulders slumped, a melancholy expression on his usually cheerful face.

“Stay thy fretting,” said Mary, patting Kitty kindly on the hand. “I knows a mob what really means business, an’ I reckons that lot only be meaning to cut your head off a little bit.”

Alison left them to it, hoping Mary’s words of wisdom didn’t somehow make the situation worse. She joined Pat at the window, looking out over the driveway and wondering whether the ghosts ever got bored of gazing at this same view.

“Everything alright?” she asked.

“Oh, fine, fine,” Pat said, pushing his glasses up his nose and smiling at her somewhat unsuccessfully. “Thank heavens you stopped them from having us all guillotined, eh?”

“Pat,” she said gently. “Is there something going on, between you and the Captain?”

“Of course not,” he said hurriedly, his voice an octave higher than normal. “What makes you think that?”

“Oh, nothing. I just thought you’d been spending a bit more time together, that’s all. Aren’t you trying to get him to listen to _The Lord of the Rings_?”

Pat nodded sadly. “I thought it might be fun to listen to it together. He’s not one for fiction, really, but I thought he might like it. Epic battle against evil, and what have you.”

“Well, just let me know when you want me to come and get it set up for you. I left the iPod in the TV room for you, last night - all charged and ready to go.”

Pat’s face paled, though she supposed it ought to have been impossible. “The TV room?” he said. “When did you go in there?”

“Sorry,” Alison said, grimacing. “I did sneak in while you and the Captain were watching _Band of Brothers_. I didn’t say anything; didn’t want to disturb you.”

“While we were watching it,” Pat repeated, eyes like saucers behind his glasses. “Definitely not afterwards, when the DVD had stopped playing?”

“No, definitely while you were still watching. Why?” she asked, watching the expression of utter, horrified relief that fell across his face, making him look like he might, in life, have needed to go and be sick.

“No reason, no reason. Absolutely no reason, at all. Well, I suppose I should go and see where Robin’s got to. He’s been eyeing the builders’ lamps again, when he thinks we’re not looking. See you later, Alison!” 

All of this was said in the rapid, desperate tones of a man with an urgent need to extricate himself from the conversation, and Pat took off immediately in the direction of the staircase. Whatever had happened, and she was beginning to suspect she knew what it might have been, Alison found herself relieved she’d left them to it last night and crept back to bed when she did.

**(iv) Physical Ability**

Gavin, the builders’ foreman, came into the kitchen at the end of a long day of banging and announced that he needed Alison and Mike to accompany him to the long gallery to inspect the findings of their investigations behind the wood panelling. They followed him in trepidation and found this had been the right attitude to adopt: behind the panels already removed, there spread over the plasterwork a dark, sinister stain.

“Common in a house this age,” said Gavin, nonplussed. “Nothing to worry about, per se, once we get the heaters on it, dry out the plaster. Just a good job we caught it when we did. Panels’ll have to go, of course.”

“What,” said Mike, looking glumly down the length of the hallway, “all of them?”

“‘Fraid so,” said Gavin. “It’s a crying shame, but the wood’s sodden; it’s rotting out from the back. Look.” He nudged one of the panels already removed with the toe of his boot and it disintegrated soggily. 

“Outrageous!” 

Fanny had appeared through the wall connecting the hallway to the neighbouring bedrooms and was surveying the damage with an expression of utmost outrage. “This will not do! This panelling is eighteenth century! It has withstood three hundred years of life in Button House!”

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Alison, ducking into the nearest bedroom and shutting the door behind her. 

“Please tell me you do not intend to take this - this charlatan! - at his word and allow him to destroy the very fabric of this house!”

“Well, if you’d been eavesdropping on the whole conversation,” Alison hissed, “you’d have heard him tell us why it’s necessary.”

“Preposterous. There hasn’t been a damp problem at Button House in a hundred years.”

“Fanny, the entire East Wing was practically underwater when we had that storm in February!”

“Utter nonsense,” said Fanny.

Alison threw her hands in the air and wished, deeply and sincerely, that Fanny, of all of the ghosts, might be the next one to be sucked off. To pass on! Balls to all of it.

“Look,” she said. "I haven’t got time for this, I’m afraid - if we’re going to have guests, we can’t have mould growing behind panelling, or plaster disintegrating on people’s heads. Maybe we can replace the wood, when we’ve got the money for it.”

“I should like to see the day!” Fanny said, before turning up her nose and sailing off through the closed door. 

Alison gritted her teeth and followed her out into the hallway, smiling in response to Mike’s raised eyebrow. “Pigeons, again! So, what do you need to do?” she asked Gavin, who rocked back on his heels and sucked a whistle of air through his teeth.

“Well, it’s not a big job, just a lot of mess. Have to get a skip in. Shouldn’t add more than a week or so’s work."

“Excellent,” said Alison. “Great.”

“You alright if we put the skip out the front? Best access through the front door.”

“Can’t see it being a problem,” said Mike, turning to Alison with a question on his face.

“Nope, absolutely no problem,” said Alison. “Bring on the skip.”

“Alison!"

Alison woke up in confusion. The Captain hadn’t partaken of his morning run of late, at least not since the evening in front of the TV and the thing Pat absolutely would not, under any circumstances, talk to Alison about.

“Alison!” 

The voice hadn’t gone away, so Alison decided to open an eye and find out what it wanted. 

It was Kitty, standing by the side of the bed and looking as though she might explode with excitement. 

“Morning, Kitty,” Alison said. “Everything alright?”

“Oh, yes!” said Kitty. She was wearing the expression that meant she wanted Alison to guess the content of her exciting news, but was simply too overcome to wait, because she burst, “More builders have arrived! Oh, and the Captain says you have to come downstairs at once.”

“Does he, indeed?” Alison began climbing out of bed and pulling on her dressing gown. 

“Do you need me?” asked Mike, without lifting his head from the pillows. 

“No, I’ve got this. You go back to sleep.”

By the time Alison reached the drawing room, the Captain was sitting on the sofa with yesterday’s _Telegraph_ still open on the music stand in front of him. He appeared to be trying to feign disinterest in whatever it was that had Kitty in such a heightened state of excitement, but Alison knew for a fact he’d already read the paper cover to cover, because she’d been the one he had summoned to turn the pages. 

“Ah, Alison,” he said, crossing one leg over the other and then uncrossing them immediately when his knees gave an alarming crack. “Good of you to join us. Fanny is concerned about the state of the drive.”

“What?” Alison said. “What’s happened to the drive?”

“Well you might ask, young lady,” said Fanny, by the window. “The frontage of this house has been despoiled.”

“What are you talking about? What’s happened?” Alison hurried to peer out of the window, and breathed a sigh of relief when she did. “Oh, the skip’s arrived.”

The skip had been positioned directly in line with the front door, somewhat obscuring the view of the broken water feature and the miniature pond. Gavin and the builders had already started a relay effort with wheelbarrows, carting out heaped piles of sodden, broken wood and hurling them into it with determination.

“As though it weren’t enough to be tearing out the finest features of your ancestral home, now you have made this house an eyesore to anyone approaching from the road.”

“It’ll be gone in a couple of weeks, before the wedding season starts,” Alison said. “Who’s going to be approaching, before then?"

“That is beside the point,” said Fanny. 

“Actually, though, with all these new people around, do you think you could all be a bit more careful about keeping yourselves inconspicuous? No nonsense with the lights, no lurking in windows.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t do to give the builders a flash of Fanny,” said Pat, peering out of the window beside Kitty.

“Exactly, Pat.”

“I’ve no interest in the view from these windows, in any case,” said Fanny, seating herself at the other end of the sofa from the Captain. "Not anymore.”

“I have,” said Kitty, giggling. “Oh! There he is, there he is!"

“Here it go,” said Robin, rolling his eyes. He glowered in the direction of the window as Mary peered round the curtains at whomever it was that Kitty had spotted.

“What is it?” Alison asked, peering over Mary’s shoulder. “Oh. Blimey.”

It was a warm day, unseasonably warm for April, the sun already high in a clear blue sky, and it appeared that one of the builders had chosen to disregard Alison’s awkward and vague request for them to remain fully clothed at all times. He flexed a number of muscles while steering a full wheelbarrow out of the house and towards the skip. Alison heard Kitty give a small, fluttering sigh.

“Wow,” said Pat, not quite under his breath.

“Robin, will you concentrate,” said Julian, without looking up from his and Robin’s chess game. “I’m still waiting for you to decide where you want me to move your bishop.”

“Me playing. Just don’t see what so special. Him got arms; we all got arms. What difference?”

“Oh, believe you me, Robin, there’s a world of difference,” said Pat, in a tone of earnest appreciation, watching the good-looking builder heft a pile of broken panelling onto his shoulder and into the waiting skip. He appeared to realise what he’d said at about the same time as everybody else in the room did, and Julian threw him a look so skewering Alison wondered if there was anything about other people’s sexual mores that he hadn’t already got worked out. 

“Aye,” piped Mary, with a sly glance in Robin’s direction. “That be one I wouldn’t goes turning out of bed.”

“Mary!” Fanny exclaimed, appalled. 

“Checkmate,” said Julian.

Robin said something so rude it made Alison’s cheeks burn, tried and failed to knock over the chess table, his hands passing straight through it as usual, and stomped out of the room.

Thomas, who had been reclining on the chaise longue and murmuring fretfully to himself, chose this moment to break into verse. 

“When the working man is honourèd,” he declaimed, one hand at his breast, "Be he pestilential or otherwise dead, Then peace, like magic light o’er all her hills and groves, Th’earth shall enjoy, and so their bones.”

“Oh, good grief,” said Julian. “Give it a rest, would you, Citizen Smith?”

“How can I rest, when there is still such great work to be done?” wondered Thomas. “My humble lines are mere gossamer upon the winds of change.”

“What’s going on?” said Alison, looking to Pat for a sane explanation.

“Thomas has gone completely red-wedge, pinko barmy, that’s what’s going on,” said Julian, before he could reply.

“I have been inspired!” Thomas protested. “By the zeal and sacrifice of the _sans-culottes_.”

“The who?”

“Walter and the villagers,” Pat explained. “Thomas has remembered that it was cool, once upon a time, for poets to say nice things about the French Revolution. He’s been up all night, writing.”

“Writing,” scoffed Julian. “Hardly the people’s poet, is he?”

“Actually, mate,” Pat said to Thomas, “I think you did steal a bit of that last one from Coleridge.”

While Thomas took to the chaise longue to complain about the others’ lack appreciation for his genius, Alison looked around and realised that the Captain had disappeared. In fact, he seemed quite literally to have vanished, having slipped from the room unnoticed while Thomas recited his poem.

Alison attempted, over the next few days, to corner Pat and question him about the situation between he and the Captain. It wasn’t that she was nosy, it was just that with the two of them apparently more determined than ever not to cross paths, the other ghosts were becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Mary and Kitty were becoming positively giddy at any mention of the builders. Meanwhile, Fanny had taken to parading back and forth in front of windows, in utter violation of Alison’s request for discretion, and Thomas had begun declaiming his radical poetry loudly from the first floor landing every morning and afternoon, despite recoiling in horror whenever one of the revolutionary heroes ventured out of the basement to parley with Alison on the subject of the reinterment of the villagers’ mortal remains and the details of the time-share agreement for access to the gardens.

It was a number of days before Alison realised she’d seen suspiciously little of Robin and the Captain, and until she finally tracked Pat down to a quiet corner of the East Wing.

“What’s got into the Captain?” she asked, meaning: did Pat know where he had disappeared to, and could he also account for Robin’s vanishing act, because it was starting to give her the heebie-jeebies?

“How should I know?” he replied shortly, before tripping over himself to apologise, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Alison. It’s just not something you need to worry about. It’ll sort itself out. It might be wise to give the Captain a bit of space, for now.”

She relayed this information to Mike over beans on toast at lunch time, and he seemed less than convinced by her assertion that she knew - just knew - that Robin and the Captain were up to something.

“I mean this in the nicest possible way, yeah?” said Mike. “But do you ever think you ought to stop getting so involved? I mean, they’ve got their own lives to live. Deaths to… die? They’re their own people.”

Alison laughed a little too enthusiastically at this, because at that moment she noticed that Humphrey’s head was suspended upside down in the branches of the crabapple tree outside the kitchen window.

When lunch was over and Mike had washed the plates and gone to see if he could work out why the WiFi signal kept cutting out as soon as you set foot inside the East Wing’s third bedroom, she went outside to see if Humphrey needed any assistance.

“Finally,” he said, frowning down at her. “I’ve been upside down like this for a good five hours.”

“How on earth did you get up there?” Alison asked, tilting her head to the side so she could attempt to look him in the eye.

“Robin kicked me out of the attic window. Literally, kicked me. I’m lying there, minding my own business, the Captain accuses me of being a spy, and the next thing you know, I’m sailing out of the window and ending up here.”

“A spy?”

“Well, they’re up there plotting, aren’t they?” Humphrey said, in a tone that indicated he might have shrugged, were he currently attached to his shoulders. “Probably worried I’d report anything I’d overheard back to you, if the opportunity presented itself.”

Alison revelled for moment in a feeling of smug vindication which was swiftly overcome by concern, imagining the havoc Robin would be capable of unleashing, under the Captain’s direction. “So, are you going to tell me what they’re planning, or what?"

“Depends,” Humphrey said, with another audible shrug. "Will you tell that useless, headless oaf where to find me, if I do? I’m sick of being left outside. The rain passing through me makes me feel all funny.”

“Yes, deal. Now, come on: details.”

“Well, they’ve taken against the builders again, haven’t they? There’s that one in particular, with the muscles, apparently he’s got the girls all a-flutter.”

Not just the girls, thought Alison.

“Well, I can’t comment on that, one way or another, though I know there’s definitely one of them with very shapely ankles. Anyway, Robin and the Captain want them gone, right? The Captain says they’re behaving improperly and disturbing the peace; Robin’s cross he can’t challenge the muscle-y one to a mammoth-hunting contest, like he would have done, back in the day.”

“So, what the hell are they planning to do to them?”

“No idea, sorry. They spotted me, just after that, and -" he made a whistling noise to indicate the trajectory of an object sailing through the air, “- here I am."

Alison let out a noise of intense frustration. “As if I haven’t got enough to worry about."

“Glad I could give you the heads-up,” said Humphrey, grinning. “Get it?”

“Very original,” said Alison. “D’you think they’re still up in the attic?”

“How would I know? I’ve been upside down in a tree all morning. Hey!” he called, as Alison turned back towards the house. "You tell that headless bastard where to find me!”

“Will do!” Alison called over her shoulder, as she hurried in the direction of the stairs. 

“Mike!”

After a pause and the sound of approaching feet, Mike stuck his head around the door of the third East Wing bedroom. “What’s up?”

“Robin and the Captain are trying to get rid of the builders again. Can you keep them occupied?”

“The builders or the ghosts?”

“The builders! Keep them in one place, if you can, while I deal with the other two - for god’s sake, don’t let them go outside. Or upstairs. Or anywhere, on their own - just keep them busy!”

“Right,” said Mike. “Stop eight guys, who I already find a bit intimidating, from going anywhere on their own. For how long?”

“As long as it takes!”

The stairs up to the attic had never been carpeted. Alison eyed the bare boards critically for a moment and then took off her boots, leaving them neatly at the foot of the banister. In socked feet, she crept up the stairs one by one, skipping the squeaky fourth step. She paused outside the door that led to the attic room above the main wing’s bedrooms; it overlooked the driveway, and had windows that opened directly above the position of the builders’ new skip. Inside, she could hear three distinct, raised voices.

She flung the door open and leaped into the room, hoping to catch them red-handed. At the window, two ghosts turned to stare at her, aghast; a third, identifiable only by its not wearing any trousers - or, regrettably, underwear - was already most of the way out of the room, its rear-end visible, while its torso presumably hovered in mid air somewhere just above the guttering. 

“Will one of you tell me when I’m supposed to push the bloody thing?” a posh, irritated voice was saying.

“Oh my god!” Alison cried, throwing up her hands to cover her eyes. “Fucking hell, Julian!”

The Captain had assumed a defiant, mulish expression, glaring at Alison across the dusty expanse of the attic, but when Julian started shuffling, arse-first, back inside the room, his gaze slipped sideways, and he took on the countenance of someone trying very hard not to spontaneously implode.

“Now, look here,” he said, pointing the swagger stick in Julian’s direction. “This is not what it looks like.”

“Yes, it is,” said Robin, mutinously. 

“What’s the matter, now?” Julian demanded, emerging into the room and flexing his fingers. “Either you want my help, or you don’t, and frankly, I don’t give a damn, either way - ah. Alison. How nice, and unexpected, to see you.”

“What’s going on?” Alison demanded. “Humphrey’s told me plenty, by the way, so don’t think you can wriggle out of it.”

“Little traitor,” muttered the Captain. 

“Told you,” said Robin. “Should have stuck him up chimney.”

“Now, look, Alison,” said Julian, hands spread in a gesture of conciliation. “I’m sure I can imagine that it looks as though I’ve colluded with these miscreants, in some way, but let me assure you that that is not the case. In fact, as an innocent and uninvolved party, I think it would be best if I went back to the drawing room and -“

“Stay exactly where you are,” said Alison, firmly.

“If you’d let me explain, I’m sure you’d see that it’s all a matter of a simple misunderstanding -“

At that moment, there was a distant crash and a cry of “Oi!” that rose up to the attic window from the driveway below. The Captain’s moustache twitched.

“What the hell have you done?” Alison demanded, hurrying to peer out of the window. On the driveway, two of the builders were talking and pointing angrily at the roof. Mike dashed out after them and appeared to be trying to persuade them to come back inside. On the gravel, just in front of the skip, lay a block of smashed masonry, which looked suspiciously like one of the large grey edging stones that lined the lip of the guttering.

Alison turned to glare at the ghosts. “So you’ve resorted to attempted murder, now, have you? Honestly, I thought better of you."

“Now, see here,” said the Captain, brandishing the stick again. “It wasn’t attempted murder. It was simply an attempt to encourage those tradesmen to reconsider their decision to carry on working here."

“Same thing we do to mammoth,” said Robin. “Push rock off cliff."

“Do shut up, Robin,” said the Captain.

“Let me guess, was there a particular target you had in mind? One builder in particular you woke up this morning feeling in the mood to assassinate?”

“Perhaps we should stop throwing around these incriminating words, like ‘plotting’ and ‘assassination’,” said Julian. “Besides which, I was brought in at the last minute, and acted entirely as the brawn rather than the brain, so if any conspiracy had taken place, I could hardly be held as responsible as those who’d done the conspiring.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alison said, fixing him with a glare. "I think ‘accessory to murder’ sounds like a stellar addition to your CV, don’t you, Julian?”

“It was not murder!” said the Captain. “It was an attempt to draw attention to these builders' shoddy adherence to rules and regulations.”

“For me, it murder.”

“Shut up, Robin!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alison demanded, glaring at the Captain with her hands firmly planted on her hips in the hope that it made her look more intimidating.

“We’ve seen enough builders come and go over the years to know a thing or to about health and safety regulations,” said the Captain. “And these - these _hooligans_ \- disregard them at every turn.”

“Haven’t seen a hard hat among them, the whole time they’ve been here,” chipped in Julian, nodding sagely. 

“And, if you recall, they were specifically instructed to maintain a decent standard of dress at all times, and these orders have been violated openly and brazenly without any reprimand from you, Alison.” The Captain drew himself up to what he probably imagined was an imposing height. “Someone’s got to maintain discipline, or the whole bally show will come down around our ears.”

“Maintain discipline! By dropping rocks on people?"

The Captain looked moderately chastened. “A reminder of the necessity of the rule of law, that those without hard hats - and adequate clothing - might think twice about their decision to parade about Button House, ripping out fixtures and fittings and setting the household into uproar.”

Alison stared at them in disbelief for a long moment. Robin was still glowering in the direction of the window, as though he were tempted to give another bit of masonry a shove and watch his least favourite builder go ’splat!’ in the manner of an unfortunate woolly mammoth. 

“Did the others know about this?”

Julian opened his mouth, no doubt about to attempt to incriminate someone else in order to save his own skin, but the Captain shook his head, somewhat guiltily. “No, no. They’re all entirely too lily-livered to do what had to be done."

“I can’t believe you! After everything we’ve been through trying to find another building firm willing to come and work here! After all the work we’ve put in drumming up new bookings for weddings! I _thought_ you were finally on our side!”

At this, the Captain looked stricken, and Julian and Robin shuffled sheepishly on either side of him. “Alison, of course we are on your side -“

“No, you’re not! You’re still so wrapped up in your own petty little squabbles, getting jealous of the builders, that you still don’t understand that this isn’t a _game_ for us! Mike and I don’t have eternity on our hands, to swan about in someone else’s house, causing trouble - this is our _lives_! I thought - I really _thought_ \- that you’d started to understand that.”

“Alison, please -“

“I don’t want to hear it,” Alison said, firmly. “I am really, really, very angry with you, Captain. All three of you. You want to go back to the way things were? Fine. If you do anything - _anything_ \- else to the builders, anything that jeopardises the future of the business, then that’s it. No more film nights and DVDs, no more newspapers over Sunday breakfast, no more audiobooks. No more chess,” she added, to Robin.

“You take chessboard, I break lights,” said Robin.

“Try it,” Alison said, through gritted teeth. “We’ll see who exhausts themselves first.”

“I, ah, take it this embargo extends to rights and privileges pertaining to online gambling?” Julian asked tentatively.

“Yes, Julian. Yes it does. Oh, and _someone_ needs to go and fish Humphrey’s head out of the apple tree." 

Alison turned on her heel and marched out of the room before any of them could say anything to soften her resolve. She stomped down the stairs, the fourth step giving an ominous groan, and shoved her feet back into her boots. 

Mike, waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, took one look at her face and three immediate steps backwards. 

“I tried to get them involved in a blokey conversation, to keep them inside,” he said apologetically, "but I think it was obvious I didn’t know anything about plastering.” 

“It’s fine,” said Alison, though she knew her expression stated very clearly that it was not. “It’s been sorted. It won’t be happening again.”

**(v) Personality**

Alison's righteous anger powered her through an afternoon of furiously scraping old wallpaper paste off the walls in the dining room, and an evening in which Mike gave her a wide berth, let her watch _The Great British Bake Off_ in silence, and tactfully didn’t mention that she’d been grinding her teeth. 

By the next morning, she was still furious, but it had mostly been overtaken by how _tired_ she was of all of it. The house, the building work, wrangling the ghosts. It would pass, she knew it would; it had the previous times she’d flung herself into bed and declared to Mike that she was done with all of them, and wanted to put the place on the market first thing the next morning. They never actually discussed it in the morning, once she’d had a good night’s sleep and forgiven Thomas for traipsing round at her heels reciting Duran Duran lyrics to her for an entire afternoon, or Fanny for lecturing her about manners while she attempted to wrestle the armoire in Kitty’s room out of the way of the fireplace, so she could stick her head up the chimney and work out if that’s where the extremely noisy crows were nesting.

The builders, thankfully, seemed ambivalent about the whole affair. They assured Alison and Mike that loose masonry was to be expected in older properties, and even began wearing hard hats in an attempt to stop Alison from lecturing them with information she’d downloaded from the Health and Safety Executive website.

As for Robin, Julian and the Captain, they generally had the sense to stay out of Alison’s way. The only evidence she saw of the Captain was when she caught him lingering awkwardly in doorways and around corners, listening in on the others’ conversations; he always disappeared, the moment he was spotted, walking straight through walls, or marching off to complete a pointless set of drills on the lawn. After a few days, Alison had almost begun to feel sorry for him.

“Hang on, you don’t have to -“ she said, when she walked past him into the drawing room and found him eavesdropping on Food Club with a wistful expression on his face, but he’d already snapped to an approximation of parade rest and melted away through the dining room wall.

Food Club had been given over, this week, to Kitty’s recollection of a dinner once served at Button House, at which the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had arrived in a golden carriage, and which Kitty had not actually been allowed to attend. She described how she had hidden on the scullery stairs and watched the kitchen staff preparing every course for the table, and had been giving an exhaustive account of each one, starting with turtle soup and ending with syllabub and ices. 

“Oh, it was all so exciting!” she exclaimed, for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Of course, because I’d hidden on the stairs, no one was able to find me for dinner in the nursery, so I was nearly starved by the time everyone got up for breakfast the next morning. I think, if I’d stayed there, no one would ever have found me.”

“Well, thank you, Kitty,” said Pat, giving her a smile. “Wonderful story. Such a lot of detail!”

He led a round of applause, while Kitty curtsied and giggled, and then Fanny fell to describing the last grand dinner held for the Duke of York at Button House, two days before he ascended to the throne. “He spent most of the time talking to George about his stamp collection,” she said, with a sniff **3**.

“Alison,” said Pat, quietly, while Fanny held forth with her personal opinions of Princess Mary, “can I trouble you for a minute?”

“Of course,” she said, sitting down next to him in the window seat. She’d been intending to head back to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and then persuade Mike to come up for an early night, while all the ghosts were occupied, but Pat was looking concerned, his moustache drooping sadly. “What’s up?"

“Well, we all know there’s been some trouble, and that the Captain, Robin and Julian are in disgrace, but I wondered how long that’s going to go on for? Only, it’s Julian’s turn to pick for Film Club, and you know how everyone gets when we don’t stick to the rota.”

“Well, that’s up to Julian. I can’t exactly ban him from Film Club, can I?”

“Well, I could, if you want me to,” he said, apparently in earnest. “What did they do? Usually Julian would have blabbed all the details, but they’re all off sulking, somewhere. Robin kept it up for six years, once, after we all ignored him when he told us there was going to be a bad storm, in ’87 **4**. His favourite tree got blown down and he didn’t speak to any of us again, until Julian turned up.”

“Look,” said Alison, tiredly, “it’s been dealt with, and I’m not about to stop anyone from having something nice to do to pass the time.” She thought, slightly guiltily, about the threat to take away Robin’s chess set. “I am still pretty cross about the whole thing.“

She gave Pat the details, from the treatment of Humphrey’s head to the confrontation in the attic. Pat’s expression grew increasingly stormy. By the end of the story, his moustache was quivering with displeasure, a frown etched in the middle of his forehead. 

“Pat, are you alright?”

“How _dare_ they,” Pat said. “After everything you’ve done to get this place ship-shape.”

“Well, I did read them the riot act,” Alison said, a little alarmed. “I’ve told them what’ll happen if they try anything like it again.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Alison,” he sat, drawing himself to his feet, “but it’s just not good enough.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and marched off towards the staircase, disappearing through the wall before she could say anything to stop him.

“Alison!” cried Kitty, waving a hand to attract her attention. “Alison! We’re going to play a game!”

“Not for me, Kitty, thanks,” she said, and followed Pat out of the room.

She had a good idea where Pat had marched off to, and by the time she reached the first floor landing, she could already hear an argument spilling under the door of the TV room. The Captain was blustering furiously, sounding bewildered to find himself so suddenly attacked and on the back foot.

“The presence of those ghastly builders is upsetting Fanny! Everything has been disordered, since the time of their arrival -“

“Whose fault is that?” demanded Pat. There was a tense silence; Alison hovered on the landing, mindful of Mike’s advice about not getting involved, certain that something complicated and fraught and none of her business was being communicated behind the closed door.

“That is entirely irrelevant to the situation at hand,” said the Captain, stiffly.

“Well, why not talk to Alison, if you’re so bothered about the builders?"

“Oh, yes,” said the Captain, sounding closer to losing his temper than Alison could ever remember hearing him before. “Talk to Alison! Do you think Julius Caesar conquered Britain by _talking_ to the Celts? Appeasement! That’s what it amounts to! Sheer bloody cowardice! Next thing you know, the panzer divisions will be rolling into Warsaw!"

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Pat demanded, his voice climbing higher by the second. “That’s not even a mixed metaphor, it’s just _insane_! Julius Caesar didn’t conquer Britain, did he? It was Claudius who did that! Alison and Mike aren’t the Wehrmacht, no one’s staging a bloody invasion, and there isn’t a sodding war on!”

At this point, Alison decided that, whatever she was walking into, it was necessary for her to intercede, if only in the interest of preventing the Captain from trying to strangle Pat with his own neckerchief. 

She opened the door to find them shouting at one another from opposite ends of the sofa. The Captain’s knuckles were white around the swagger stick and Pat’s hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

“I refuse to apologise for trying to do what is best for the residents of Button House!" the Captain insisted, ignoring Alison completely. 

“Oh, bugger off, you wouldn’t know what was best for anyone in this house if - if -”

“Well, you _were_ making rather a fool of yourself,” the Captain interrupted, his moustache twitching. “Lolling about in the window, making eyes at underdressed workmen.”

Pat’s hair was hanging across his forehead, shaken loose by the force of his rage. “Bit rich coming from you, you hypocritical, self-centred _arse_! As if we haven’t all spent years watching you moon over any Tom, Dick or Harry with a pair of biceps!”

There was a horrified pause, as though a glass had been smashed and everyone was busy looking around to see who’d dropped it. Pat’s eyes flew to Alison, frozen in the doorway, at exactly the same time as the Captain’s did. He looked rather as though he’d been slapped, his eyes wide and astonished. A grimace passed over him, a shudder of horror that made it look as though his face had folded in upon itself, and then he fled. 

“Cap, hang on a minute,” Pat said, stretching out a hand, but it was too late. The Captain had already turned on his heel and disappeared through the wall. Pat stood helplessly, staring at the empty space he had vacated.

“I’ll go,” Alison said. She ducked out of the room, but when she rounded the corner, the landing was empty, as were the stairs and the rest of the upstairs bedrooms. She checked each of them, one by one, before returning to the TV room. She found Pat sitting on the sofa, staring at the dark TV screen, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. 

“No sign of him,” she said apologetically. “Think he probably needs a bit of time on his own.”

“Thanks, Alison,” Pat said, with a watery smile. “I think - I think I could probably do with a bit of that, as well, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh. No, no, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” She paused. “Will you be alright? Happy to listen, if you want to talk.”

“I think I’ve already done quite enough of that, for one day,” Pat said. “Don’t worry about me. Worse things happen at sea.”

“Do they?”

Pat didn’t reply. She left him gazing sadly at the pile of DVDs stacked next to the TV stand, on top of which _The Pacific_ sat waiting to be unwrapped.

**(vi) Intelligence**

Negotiations with Walter and the villagers had been swift and successful, once Alison banned Julian from setting foot within a hundred yards of them. They’d agreed that on May Day, the ghosts of Button House would attempt to share the gardens, and in anticipation, something of a festive spirit had started to spread. The prospect of a party seemed to have allayed Kitty’s concerns about her possible decapitation, and the villagers had agreed they’d suspend the commune’s constitutional agreement not to fraternise with their oppressors for the duration of a single afternoon. Even Robin seemed to be rather looking forward to it, though he was still determined to pretend that Alison didn’t exist, and made sinister hand gestures at the builders behind her back, whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

The day before the festivities, Alison knocked on a shelf in the library to alert Julian to her presence, and was glad she had done when he jabbed the ‘esc’ button in panic as soon as she appeared, and spent the next five minutes trying to shield her view of the screen with his shirt tails. 

“I’m not bothered what you’ve been Googling,” she said, with a sigh. “Just try not to end up with any viruses.”

“I can do without the sexual health seminar, thank you,” Julian said. “What do you want, anyway? Come to bore me to death all over again?”

“Actually,” said Alison, “I’ve come to invite you to a party, although I’m starting to reconsider that, now, actually.”

“Party, eh?” said Julian, with exaggerated disinterest.

“We’re inviting the villagers up to the garden for May Day,” she said. “You don’t have to come, but I wanted to make it clear you’d be welcome. It’s been three weeks, Julian. I think we can draw a line under everything and start again, don’t you?”

“May Day, you say. How fitting. I imagine there’ll be some sort of ritualistic sacrifice, involving parts of me ending up on spikes?”

“Not if you steer clear of Nigel. Oh, come on, Julian,” she added, when he started to protest, “that was a joke.”

“Yes, well. Perhaps I’ll consult my calendar and see if there’s any paint I might like to watch dry, instead.”

Alison left him to it, and attempted to track down the Captain in order to extend an olive branch in his direction, too. He was nowhere to be found, and Alison suspected he was attempting to hide from her, so she wrote a note and left it on the dresser in the Captain’s bedroom, asking him if he’d please come to the May Day celebrations. She didn’t hold out much hope.

Alison was woken, on May Day morning, by sunlight filtering through the curtains and illuminating the bed in warm, bright splotches. 

“Morning,” she murmured into Mike’s shoulder and flung an arm out to silence the alarm on her phone, which Mary had insisted she set for just after dawn. 

“Mornin',” said Mary, very close to Alison’s ear.

“Oh, God - Mary, what are you doing here - and Kitty,” she added, opening her eyes to see the pair of them looming over the bed. “What are you both doing in here?”

“It be May morning,” said Mary, with a grin. “Up and rises, we goes a-maying.”

“Oh, do hurry up, Alison,” said Kitty, bouncing with excitement. “Mary says, if we collect the dew from the flowers and bathe in it, it will make us even more beautiful!"

“It’s too early,” Alison protested.

“What’s happening?” muttered Mike, without opening his eyes.

“We be making her lusty and fruitful,” Mary told him.

“Jesus, Mary! We’re going for a walk,” she added, for Mike’s benefit. “For reasons I’m not 100% clear on, yet.”

“Have fun,” said Mike, mostly still asleep.

It transpired that ‘going a-maying’ was actually a lovely way to start the day, once Alison had put on clothes and stumbled out of the house into the fresh, morning air. 

“Where are we going?” she asked, squinting in the sun.

“I knows just the place,” said Mary, “Have you the hewing blade?”

Alison confirmed that she’d remembered to bring the hacksaw she’d borrowed from the builders, as promised, and the three of them set off across the fields behind the house towards the copse of trees that stood at the crest of the hill overlooking the village. 

When Alison and Mike had checked the deeds, the little clump of trees had been marked as ‘Gamekeeper’s Wood’, and allegedly supported a population of sixty pheasant. Fanny had been quick to disabuse them of that notion, tutting over the fact that game had not been properly kept since some time after the Great War, when the majority of the servants had left and George had frittered away the greater part of the family fortune. 

“Used to be great woodlands, hereabouts,” said Mary, as they stepped into the cool shade beneath the beech trees. “Nows, this be all that’s left. Trees and furze and may bush. Here, take a whiff of that.”

She indicated that Alison should lean closer to the hawthorn bushes that lay on either side of the overgrown path. She did so, and inhaled the scent of the hawthorn’s white blossom; it was heavy and sweet and ripe.

“Smells like… vanilla, and rotting meat?” Alison hazarded, taking another sniff. It was years since she’d been in the countryside long enough to stand around smelling bits of it.

“Death,” said Mary. “Smells like death, and a man’s spend.”

“Spend?” Alison said, pausing in smelling the flowers. “You mean…?”

“Yes, Mary, what do you mean?” demanded Kitty. 

Mary grinned and nodded at the flower-laden bough just above Alison’s head. “You just cuts a bough and brings it in, that it bring you luck and merry beddings.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Alison protested, but Kitty and Mary looked so insistent that she gave in and started sawing through the bit of branch she could reach above her head. 

May bough in hand, they made their way back to the house, Kitty demanding to be told what the hawthorn blossom smelled like, until Mary stopped them in a little patch of shade just beyond the wall of the kitchen garden. 

“Here, now,” she said, pointing to the feathery leaves of a plant growing close to the wall, glistening with dew and topped with a bobbing froth of cream-coloured flowers. “It be yarrow. Shake the dews, an’ it give thee beauty.”

Alison did as she was instructed, shaking the dew from the leaves into the cupped palm of her hand and then, at Mary’s insistence, patting it onto her face. It was fresh and cold and smelled of clean, sweet grass. 

“Oh, what about me?” cried Kitty, when she realised she wouldn’t be able do the same.

“You be lovely enough,” said Mary, nudging her with her elbow. “Needs no May magic to bewitch a lover.”

“Oh,” said Kitty, greatly mollified. “Do you really think so?”

“I do,” Alison agreed. “Come on, let’s get back.”

Walter led the villagers out of the basement just after lunchtime, and they emerged into the garden looking for all the world like a troop of filthy, sore-ridden moles, squinting and blinking and holding up hands to shade their eyes from the sun. 

“Ooh, it’s nice up here,” said Geoff, whose advanced syphilis competed with the plague sores to make his face especially horrifying in the clear light of day. 

“Well, welcome to the garden,” said Alison, without looking at him directly. “Enjoy!”

“Alison!” 

Alison turned to find Fanny bearing down on her like a steamship in a tea dress. 

“Alison! I expressly forbade the use of the rose garden!”

“The deal was, they can go wherever they like,” Alison said, shrugging. “Sorry, Fanny.”

“Well, it’s a disgrace! Are the shades of Button House to be thus polluted!”

“Oh, _Pride and Prejudice_ ,” Alison acknowledged, leaving her spluttering at the sight of John and Walter leaping over the box hedge to inspect Florence and her statuesque state of undress. “Good one, Fanny."

Thomas had emerged from the drawing room looking extremely perturbed to find himself sharing the lawn with the unwashed revolutionaries, and was standing awkwardly by the lilac bush, flinching whenever any of the villagers looked as though they might attempt to speak to him.

“Thomas,” Alison said. “Why don’t you give us all some of your poetry? He’s been very impressed by your protest,” she added, to Margaret. “It’s inspired some wonderful poems.”

“Oh,” said Thomas. “Alison, are you sure? My verse is, perhaps, a little too refined for the ears of common folk.”

“Hark at thee,” said Mary. “Perhaps common folks be too sensible to listen to thy prattle.”

“Yeah,” said Walter. “I’m an artist, mate, an’ I know a good poem when I hear it. ‘Ere,” he called, to the rest of the villagers, “where’s Colin? He used to be able to recite that long one by heart. Let’s have that one!”

“Aye!” the villagers chorused, while Colin was seized and dragged, somewhat reluctantly, to stand before the assembled ghosts and Alison.

“Alright, then?” said Colin, uncertainly. “This be the poem of Piers Plowman.” He cleared his throat, and then began to recite, in clear, strident tones: “In somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne, I schop me into a shroud, as I a scheep were…”

Alison smiled to herself and left them to it, heading over to the sunny patch of lawn where Mike lay snoozing in a deckchair. 

He’d been uncertain about joining the party, but Alison had persuaded him that they both deserved an afternoon off, that he could sunbathe in peace, and that she would let him know if any of the ghosts desperately wanted to talk to him.

“Well, don’t let any of them sit on me, or anything,” he'd said dubiously, settling himself into the rickety deckchair they’d found while clearing out the garden, and then promptly fallen asleep, oblivious to the villagers standing next to him, peering at his jeans and beaten-up Nike Airs with the air of tourists inspecting an exhibit in a museum. 

Beside him, Robin was sprawled upon the grass, staring thoughtfully at the sky, while Mary and Kitty chattered next to him about their memories of May Days past.

“There was a maypole on the village green,” Kitty was saying. “All the little girls and boys wore their best clothes, and they danced and danced until it was time to choose the May queen. I always wanted to dance, too, but Mama said we weren’t to mix with the village children. They crowned my sister May queen, once, when she snuck down the the village without our nursemaid noticing; I tried to follow her, and I was sent to bed without supper for three days.”

“Oh, Kitty, I’m sorry,” said Alison, coming to sit down beside them.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mind. I practiced dancing by myself; perhaps next year we can have a maypole?”

“We had dancings, and feastings, and we used to go outs in the fields and search for an ‘usband,” Mary said, wistfully, saving Alison from having to commit to furnishing Button House with a maypole. “Many a union made and consummated ‘mid the flowers, hereabouts."

“Don’t get any idea,” grunted Robin.

“What use have I for 'usbands, anymore?” Mary said. She flopped onto the grass beside him and spread her hands on the grass as though reminiscing about the feel of it against her skin. “A wedding weren’t the purpose I goes out in the fields on May Day for, anyway,” she added, eyeing Robin in a manner Fanny would have called indecorous. 

By the end of the afternoon, Alison was prepared to declare the party a complete success. After the recitation of two-thirds of Piers Plowman, Thomas and Colin appeared to have engaged in something akin to a very polite rap battle, trading verses of poetry on a range of subjects suggested by the villagers while their audience heckled and gave their opinion about who they thought had won each round.

Julian had emerged, begrudgingly, at some point in the proceedings, with a belligerent shout of, “Well, then, hoi-polloi, who wants to lose a game of football?” and proceeded to play a ramshackle match with Pat and Thomas against Walter and the villagers, using Humphrey’s head as the ball, until he was tackled by Nigel and accused of diving by everybody involved, at which point he’d gone to sulk with Fanny in the shade beneath the pergola. 

The rest of the ghosts had subsequently been roped into an enormous game of hide-and-seek by Kitty, and her shrieks of delight could be heard from the kitchen when Alison stepped inside to fetch she and Mike a glass of water. 

“Here,” she said, nudging him awake, when she went back outside. “You’ll get heatstroke.”

“How’s it going?” he asked, sitting up to glug down half the glass. “Anyone punch each other yet?”

“Not yet,” Alison said, watching Mary chase Robin in the direction of the summer house. “There’s probably still time.”

“Hullo Alison,” said Pat, having appeared at her elbow, glancing eagerly in Mike’s direction. “Would you mind telling Mike how much I enjoyed the last party? The one when you brought all your friends back from the pub?”

“Okay,” said Alison, a bit bewildered. “Pat’s here,” she said to Mike. “He says he enjoyed the last party, the one when everyone came back from the pub.”

“Oh,” said Mike, looking discomfited and staring at a patch of thin air two feet above Pat’s head. “Right. Tell him thanks, I guess?”

“He says thanks,” said Alison. 

“I know,” said Pat, with a smile. "I can hear him, remember.”

“Right, sorry, yeah. Um, was there anything else you wanted, Pat?”

“Yes, actually. I wondered whether you could ask Mike whether he’d be able to teach me how to beatbox.”

“You want Mike… to teach you how to beatbox?”

“If he wouldn’t mind,” said Pat. “When he has time, of course.”

“Well, I can only do the throat bass thing,” said Mike, to the space above Pat’s head. “And a kind of snare thing, but not at the same time.”

“Tell him it was very cool at the party,” said Pat. 

“He says he thought it was cool,” said Alison.

“Thanks, man,” said Mike, looking pleased. It was the only time anyone had told him the throat bass thing was cool, without being six pints into an extremely messy night. 

“Alright, alright,” said Alison to Pat. “Stop inflating his ego, and go and make sure Walter and Nigel haven’t roasted and eaten Julian, would you?”

“Right you are,” said Pat, and ambled off in the direction of the pergola, whistling to himself. 

The back of Alison’s neck prickled and she glanced up at the first-floor windows, certain they were being watched. She caught a glimpse of the Captain, half-hidden behind the curtains in his bedroom, staring down at them with his face pinched into a sullen frown. He ducked when spotted, appeared to realise he could still be seen, and staggered out of sight on bended knee. 

With a sigh, Alison turned to Mike and handed him the water glass. “Hold the fort for a bit,” she said. “Just nipping upstairs.”

“What, you’re leaving me alone?” he said, wide-eyed, glancing around. “With all of them?”

“Try not to walk through anybody," she advised, making her way across the lawn. “Maybe just stay in the deckchair?"

Alison climbed the stairs to the first floor landing knowing there was every chance that the Captain had already made his escape, but when she pushed open the door to his room, the one with the particularly oppressive William Morris wallpaper, he was hovering uncertainly at the foot of the bed, clearly caught in the midst of debating whether or not to flee.

“Captain."

“Alison, I order you to leave this bedroom, or I shall be forced to - to - Or I shall be forced to,” he concluded, triumphantly.

She crossed her arms and shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

“Right. Yes. Well, fine.” 

He made as though to stride past her, out of the room, back ramrod straight and face beset by storms. 

Alison said, just before he escaped, “Have you considered the possibility that he gets on your nerves because you like him so much?”

The Captain froze and glanced at her with a look of absolute horror, which he swiftly concealed beneath a scowl. “I’m afraid I’ve no idea who - or what - you’re referring to,” he said stiffly.

“Pat gets fairly cross with you, too, doesn’t he? I mean, when you’re not watching war films, or chatting about cricket, or singing Gilbert and Sullivan together?” 

The Captain looked rather startled, apparently unaware that she knew about Pat’s tendency to join in with the chorus of ‘I Am A Pirate King’ when the Captain whistled it in the drawing room as he made his way through the front page of the Telegraph on Sunday. It was true that she’d never mentioned it; it seemed of such little consequence to any of the other ghosts, she’d assumed it must have already been a long-standing Button House tradition by the time she and Mike moved in. 

“Preposterous,” said the Captain, looking as though he was considering diving head-first out of the window. 

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means... well, you know how to push each other’s buttons.”

The Captain made a strangled noise of distress.

“Ordinarily, I’d say it was a bad idea, given that we all have to live together. But in this case, I’d say you know each other well enough, by now, to be pretty sure that Pat’s not pretending to be anything that he’s not. I’d say he’s probably fairly familiar with all of your bad bits, too.”

When she glanced at the Captain, he seemed on the verge of some form of aneurysm. She’d considered introducing him to the concept of ‘sexual tension’, but was glad she’d decided against it. 

After thirty seconds of horrified silence, he appeared to regain the power of speech.

“If you think,” he said, in a tone of having taken the deepest offence, “that I would countenance fraternisation with Patrick, or - or entering into some sort of sordid domestic arrangement, when his having suggested such a thing in the first place betrays such an utter lack of respect, an utter lack of decency, then I - then I -"

The wind seemed to leave his sails before he’d quite finished, and he crumpled a little, turning to stare somewhat brokenly out of the window. 

“Was there anything sordid about Sam and Claire’s domestic arrangement?” Alison asked, gently, watching the Captain’s shoulders sag further.

“Well, no, of course not. That was all rather beautiful.” He turned to glance at her, before returning to the view over the gardens. “I see what you're doing, Alison, but I’m afraid it simply isn’t as easy as all that.”

It made sense, at least, of the mystery of what Pat had been so afraid she’d witnessed that evening in the snug, when _Band of Brothers_ had stopped playing and Pat had, presumably, tried to bridge the space between them on the sofa. She could just imagine it: Pat, reaching out, with all his courage and his kindness, and the Captain’s inevitable reaction. It made her sad for both of them.

She wished, intensely, that she could pat him on the shoulder, or lay a comforting hand on his arm, or do anything to show that she knew she didn’t, and couldn’t understand, but that she was willing to try, if only he would give her a clue as to how. 

“That’s the problem with caring about other people, though, isn’t it?” she said, instead.

“Alison,” the Captain said, with an edge of quiet desperation. “Please, leave this bedroom, or I shall be forced to.”

She slipped out of the open door and left him gazing out at the garden, his hands clasped behind his back, a forlorn figure at parade rest in the softening glow of the afternoon sun. 

**(vii) Response**

If the Captain had been absent before Alison forced the issue of the state of relations between he and Pat, then afterwards it was as though he’d disappeared off the face of the planet entirely. She tried not to feel too guilty about it.

She didn’t have much time for worrying about the ghosts’ personal issues, in any case, because it was suddenly two weeks until the first wedding of the season, and the builders had been pulling out all the stops to finish the work on the ground floor in time. The plaster had finally been declared dry, the infrared lamps wheeled back into the transit van - much to Robin’s disappointment - and the parquet floor in the dining room had been fixed, so there was no longer any danger of tripping and falling head-first into the enormous portrait of Thomas’s great-nephew, which glowered at guests from the wall behind the dining table.

“We’re so close to being finished,” she said to Pat, while they watched the builders load the skip, full of sodden wood panelling and moth-eaten carpet, onto the back of a lorry, late one evening. “We just need to stop the chandelier wobbling whenever anyone walks into Kitty’s bedroom, and a final push in the garden to get the ivy under control. Wish we knew anything about gardening,” she added glumly, wincing at the thought of the cost of hiring a professional.

“Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid,” said Pat, with an apologetic shrug. He caught sight of something out of the window that made his face collapse into a frown. “Oh. Is today the tenth?”

Alison followed his gaze and saw the Captain striding purposefully across the lawn in the direction of Gamekeeper’s Wood, his stick tucked neatly under his arm. 

“Yep,” she said, glancing at him. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. He does it every year, always the same day. Has done for as long as as I’ve been here.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Off to sit in the woods, I think. No idea what he does while he’s in there. I offered to go with him, once, but he got a bit narky, and I haven’t asked, since.”

Pat was frowning as he watched the Captain become a distant, dark shape in the long grass beyond the garden gate. It was twilight, the end of a long, sun-baked day, and colours were muted and flattened to a cold palette of blues and greys.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been a bit worried about him, lately,” Pat confided quietly, glancing tentatively at Alison.

“You don’t have to give me the details, obviously, but it’s been awful, for weeks, between the two of you, Pat. What happened?"

“Oh, just a silly misunderstanding,” said Pat. “Nothing for you to worry about. He’ll come round.”

“But you’ve started listening to _The Lord of the Rings_ by yourself.”

Pat gave her a wavering smile, and they lapsed into silence as they watched the Captain disappear into the forbidding shadows beneath the beech trees.

“I think it’s something to do with the war, the reason that he goes down there,” Pat said, after long moments of silence. “I mean, when isn’t it, with him?" 

“It’s bothering you, isn’t it.”

Pat sighed, the way he did when he was peeved at the others, and peeved at himself for showing it. "I don’t like the idea of him sitting out there in the dark, on his own, is all. Never have.”

Alison looked out over the lawn towards the wood, the trees silhouetted against a rapidly darkening sky. “Well, then, maybe he shouldn’t have to, anymore,” she said. “Come on."

While Pat voiced the opinion that it was probably a foolish idea, they hurried down the staircase and out onto the drive, past the departing skip lorry, and skirted the East Wing to follow the line of the garden out beyond the shadow of the house. There was a lingering warmth in the air, the smell of night-scented stocks carried sweetly from the garden, and an owl was hooting, somewhere in the row of oak trees that lined the road to the village. It was as close to picturesque as anything Alison had seen since arriving at Button House.

“He’ll probably tell us to do one,” said Pat as they traipsed through the long grass towards the woods. “Wouldn’t blame him, after what I said to him the other week. Not that he didn’t deserve it. I mean, he is a wazzock.”

“A complete and utter one,” agreed Alison. "Wouldn’t be him, if he wasn’t, though.”

Pat was quiet, striding along beside her with his bare legs drifting through the grass. “I think that's most of the problem,” he said, after a moment, sounding glum and resigned. “He is what he is, and I’m… well, I’m me, aren’t I?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know the Captain. I haven’t got arms, have I?"

When Alison turned to look at him, he was staring determinedly at the distant shape of the woodland, ignoring her gaze completely.

“Oh, Pat,” she said. “You’re lovely just as you are. You’re the only one of that lot I can bear talking to, most of the time. Bit of a low bar, mind you,” she continued. “I mean - no, what I meant is, you’re definitely one of my top two favourite non-living people of all time. The other one being David Bowie.”

The corners of his mouth twitched beneath his moustache, and he threw her a small, sidelong smile. “Thanks, Alison.”

“No problem.”

By this time, they had reached the edge of the wood, and Alison had to clamber over fallen branches and thick undergrowth to follow Pat beneath the trees. She fumbled for her phone and switched on the torch, holding it out in front of her so she could see where to place her feet.

“He’d better be in here,” she muttered, when she snagged her jeans on brambles for the third time. She tugged herself free, and then realised the Captain was sitting on a fallen log at the edge of a clearing in the trees ahead of them. 

It appeared that kids from the village had used the woods as a hang out, if the remains of the fire in the centre of the clearing, and the empty cans of Red Stripe, fag ends and crisp packets were anything to go by. Alison made a mental note to do something about putting up better fences, and then immediately felt like Walter would say that property ownership had corrupted her, because she’d spent more nights than she cared to remember, once, huddled in the park with her mates from school, drinking cider from a two-litre bottle and smoking to impress boys who hadn’t turned out to be worth the effort. 

“Hullo, Cap,” said Pat, gently.

The Captain startled, though Alison had made enough noise stumbling through the undergrowth to alert anyone within a ten-mile radius to their presence. He stared at them, surprised.

“Patrick,” he said, in a tone so nakedly grateful that Alison rather wished she’d persuaded Pat to make the journey into the woods by himself. His gaze slid sideways and he straightened in his seat, nodding at her coolly. “Alison.”

“At ease, Captain,” she said, stepping over the log on the other side of the burned out fire. “Mind if we join you?”

“Well,” said the Captain, drily. "I’m told it’s a free country.”

“Touché,” said Alison, sitting down on the log.

Pat sat down, too, his bare knees pale in the light of Alison’s phone.

“What are you doing here?” asked the Captain tightly, after a long moment of awkward silence.

“Well,” said Alison.

“We came to apologise,” said Pat, in a rush. “Well, I did, at any rate. I’m sorry about what I said. It wasn’t fair to spring it on you like that. It’s your business, and I had no right to go making assumptions, and, well... it’s not the first time I’ve done that recently, is it?”

The Captain glanced at him, and then his eyes flickered away again to settle on the trees on the other side of the clearing. He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. It transpires that neither of your assumptions was, in the end, entirely incorrect.”

“Oh,” said Pat, as though this admission had taken the wind out of his sails. “Right. Well, I am sorry, and I feel a right twit about it.”

The Captain glanced at him again, and this time his gaze lingered. “I - likewise,” he said.

“Listen, Captain,” said Alison, gently. “Pat was worried about you, and we didn’t like to think of you sitting out here, on your own. We can go again, if you’d like. Pat just thought you might like some company."

“You have been a bit out of sorts, lately,” Pat said, in the voice he sometimes used when Robin was in one of his melancholy phases about the nature of the passage of time. He leaned forward and gave the Captain a small, encouraging smile. "What’s up, mate?"

It looked, for a moment, like the Captain was suffering a minor internal war, while he decided whether to press ahead or retreat. He glanced at Pat and Alison uncertainly, as though trying to gauge their sincerity, and cleared his throat.

“I’ve been coming down here, on this day, for as long as I’ve been at Button House,” he said, stiffly, after a long and pregnant pause. “For four years before I - well, before. And then, I don’t suppose it occurred to me to stop. It’s an anniversary, of sorts, you see, and I - well. I find it helps, to come here. It helps me to remember.”

The Captain’s eyes were distant, his gaze soft and remembering and focused somewhere beyond the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. His hands flexed on the swagger stick and he cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“We came out here, on this night, in 1940,” he said, slowly, in the manner of someone walking towards a firing squad. "Some notion of mine about having to conduct a guerrilla campaign, should Jerry actually invade. My lieutenant thought it an excellent idea; said it might give the men something to take their minds off waiting for news from France. Havers. That was his name, my lieutenant."

The Captain paused, for a moment, a frown creasing his brow. "We bivouacked under the trees. Tents, fires for cooking, that sort of thing. Of course, all of the wood was green. If Jerry had been prowling the countryside, he’d have found us rather swiftly.”

“Smoke,” Pat murmured. “No good starting a fire with green wood."

“Yes, exactly. It was rather a cold night, and it transpired that Havers had brought with him a flask of whisky. Not strictly regulation, but there was rather a festive atmosphere in the air, despite the news from the Front. I suppose it was a sort of grim determination: all of us resolved to do our part, one way or another.

“The thing you must realise,” the Captain said, quietly, "is that I had no notion of what a man might be, what a man might do, outside the confines of the army. Havers asked about my service, once, and I gave him the highlights, of course: volunteered, 1915, straight out of school; Loos, Arras, a nasty spot at the 3rd Ypres that had me packed off home to Blighty. I’d been in the army ever since. I never thought… I never thought of doing anything else. Until Havers, I had never considered…”

He cleared his throat, frowning again. "That night, there seemed to be a peculiar magic in the air. It was cold, but the sun lingered on the horizon, and the trees were painted beautifully in tones of reds and golds. I remember I thought to myself, it was as though the world had taken a breath, and paused, waiting, to let it out again. Havers and I were encamped a little way from the men; it didn’t do to give them the idea they were always being watched, they needed to talk amongst themselves, as equals, without commanding officers peering over their shoulders. I remember Havers offered me the whisky, and I thought to myself that a nip couldn’t hurt. Just a dram to stave off the chill.

“I suppose I drank rather too much; I remember Havers flushed pink in the glow of the fire. He did a remarkable thing, and asked me a question no one else ever had, about what I might do if I weren’t a soldier. It had never occurred to me to consider it, so I gave him the only answer I could come up with: that, were I not a soldier, I would wish to live somewhere free of judgment, beyond the bounds of regular society. I said I would move to the wilderness, somewhere, alone, and live there in freedom for the rest of my days. He seemed - he seemed to understand."

The Captain lapsed into silence, his eyes upon the horizon, and seemed to get lost there. 

“What did the Lieutenant say?” Alison asked, gently. 

The Captain glanced at them, swiftly, his expression shuttered.

“You can tell us to naff off, if you like,” said Pat. “We won’t mind."

“No, no. It’s quite alright,” the Captain said, with a grim twist to his lips. "I’ve started this bally story, so I may as well finish it. Havers said - well, he said that he liked the sound of the wilderness, only that it didn’t sound like wilderness to him, if he were there, and I were to be there, too. He said he liked the sound of the life we might make together.” He drew in a ragged breath. "Do you know what I did? Nothing. I did nothing. I brushed it off and we went to our separate beds and the next morning I pretended the whole thing had been a figment of his imagination.”

“What happened to Havers?” said Alison.

“Oh, he requested a transfer soon afterwards. Went off to North Africa; bought it at Tobruk in ’42. I never did,” the Captain said, his voice trembling, “I never did see him again.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the mournful call of an owl from the far side of the wood. 

Alison wished, deeply, that she could reach across the clearing between them and place a comforting hand on the Captain’s arm; anything more expressive was unlikely to be well-received. The Captain seemed to be holding himself upright through sheer force of will, looking for all the world like an edifice in which cracks were about to appear, as though one wrong move might see him collapse into rubble.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” she said, climbing off the log. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Pat glanced up at her gratefully and she gave him a watery smile in reply, scrubbing at her damp cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper before she set off in the direction of the house.

She slipped in through the front door and made her way straight for the dusty drinks cabinet in the drawing room, ignoring Kitty’s plaintive call for her to join she and Thomas in a game of charades. Bottle in hand, she ducked into the kitchen to find Mike at the table with a spoonful of chocolate spread halfway to his mouth, the jar open in front of him. 

“Just checking it hadn’t gone out of date,” he said, dropping the spoon back into the jar. He paused, taking in her slightly wild appearance. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, nothing, just borrowing this,” she said, showing him the bottle of shatteringly expensive, extremely well-aged whisky in her hand. “Ghost stuff. I’ll explain later.”

“Okay,” he said, uncertainly, getting out of his chair. “Are you sure, though, because you look - "

She nodded, then put her arms around him and drew him into a brief, fierce hug. 

“Woah,” he said, “everything’s cool, yeah?”

She nodded, pressing her face into the shoulder of his hoodie. When she pulled away, she’d left a smear of mascara behind. “It’s fine, honestly. I’ll tell you when I get back.”

She kissed him on the cheek and set off again for the woods.

It was easier to pick her way through the brambles and tree trunks when she was able to follow a path she’d already forged. She held her phone out in front of her again, avoided snaring herself on wicked-looking thorns, and made her way back to the clearing without incident. When she got there, she saw that Pat had joined the Captain on his fallen log, and that they were curved towards one another like quotation marks, the pair of them intent and quiet and oblivious to her approach. The Captain’s face was hidden, and Pat perched beside him with a tentative, comforting hand on his shoulder, as though this might have been his attempt at holding the jagged pieces of the Captain together on his behalf. She made sure she stepped on a branch or two to give them fair warning, and watched the Captain draw an unsteady hand across his eyes, while Pat shifted far enough away to allow him some measure of his dignity. 

“Thought we could raise a toast,” Alison said when she sat down, brandishing the bottle. “Not much use to you, I suppose, but I know I could do with a drink."

“It's a lovely thought,” Pat said, smiling at her. “You can drink for the three of us.”

She uncapped the bottle and held it aloft. The moon had risen high enough to cast soft shadows on the ground, and it lit the bottle and its contents ethereally. “Captain, would you like to make the toast?"

The Captain nodded, his mouth a thin, resolute line beneath his moustache. “To Havers,” he said. “To bravery.”

Alison nodded and knocked back a mouthful of whisky, coughing when it hit the back of her throat. 

“You ought to pour a bit on the ground,” Pat said, his eyes shining. “Like they used to back in the day, the Romans and such like. There’s something in this place that calls for it. Robin would probably approve.”

“Captain?”

The Captain nodded, briskly. “I don’t see why not.”

“Alright then,” Alison said, and leaned forward to pour a measure of whisky onto the damp grass. “To Havers,” she said quietly. 

They sat there for a little while, watching the moon finally climb the sky above the canopy of leaves, Alison perched on her log and Pat a concerned, solicitous comma at the Captain’s side. There was a cold breeze whipping through the trees now that the light had faded, and Alison realised belatedly that she’d left her jacket behind at the house. Pat and the Captain didn’t appear to notice the cold. Wiping her hands on her jeans and recapping the bottle, she got to her feet. 

“Think I’ll head back to the house, it’s a bit nippy out here, for me.”

Pat cast a glance at the Captain, who was gazing into the middle distance, again. “Think I’ll keep the Captain company for a bit,” he said quietly. “If that’s alright with you, Cap?”

He received no reply, but offered her a small, earnest smile, nonetheless.

“Take your time,” she told them, before she slipped away. “See you in the morning.”

“See you, Alison,” Pat said. The Captain said nothing, his gaze lost in the moon shadows that hung beneath the branches of the beech trees.

**(viii) A Four-Letter Word for Winning**

Alison was lying on the grass watching clouds drift beyond the branches of the apple tree. It was almost entirely covered in honeysuckle, blossom the colour of pear drops frothing from its branches, and its thick, honey smell was all around her, lulling her to sleep. It was so nice to let herself doze in this shady, quiet spot that she found herself hoping no one would miss her; that everyone might leave her alone for a couple of hours to snooze in the sunshine, while she had the chance.

“Sorry!” cried Humphrey, as his head sailed through the air and came to rest by her feet, face-down in the lawn.

Thomas came running after it, apologising as he went. “Forgive me, Alison, forgive me; it was an ambitious shot, and I’m afraid I rather underestimated the strength of my overarm.”

Alison sighed and sat up. “What are you playing?”

“A new game of Robin’s invention,” Thomas said, stooping to pick up Humphrey’s head.

“Does it involve chucking Humphrey’s head at things?”

“Sometimes, it really is just nice to be included,” said Humphrey. 

Alison took stock of the activity in the rest of the garden and allowed herself to feel a little bit pleased by what she saw. Walter and Julian were arguing about politics under the pergola, Kitty and Jemima were paddling in the fish pond, and Fanny was reclining in the rose garden, surveying the rest of them with a strange, peaceful expression on her face; Alison supposed it might have been happiness.

Mike ambled up the garden steps and handed her a beer, clinking his bottle against hers before he sat down.

“Here’s to a successful wedding,” he said, tipping back his head to take a drink.

“And three new bookings,” Alison added. They clinked again and she took a long drink of her own, glad she’d remembered to put a couple of bottles in the fridge for when they’d finished the post-wedding clear up. “It’s been a really good weekend,” she said, with an air of surprise. “Went off without a hitch.”

“Have you said thank you to this lot for behaving themselves?” Mike asked, meaning the ghosts, but waving a hand over his shoulder in entirely the wrong direction.

“They’re making me watch _Love, Actually_ with them, later.”

“Unlucky.”

“Fanny asked if I could have a look in the writing desk in the library, for her, first; she thinks there are some photos in there of the family. We’re going to try to put some faces to names in the generations between her and Thomas. Apparently, one of them was completely barmy; hosted a dinner party, once, and the only thing the people he invited had in common, was their surnames all ended in ‘bottom’ **5**.”

Mike choked on his mouthful of beer. “Sounds pretty interesting. Am I invited? To the film, not the bottom-themed party."

“Well,” said Alison, “I didn’t think you’d want to be. You get weird about them sitting next to you.”

Mike shrugged, looking out over a scene he couldn’t appreciate in all its bonkers glory. “Reckon they’re starting to grow on me.”

Alison watched Robin try to wrestle Humphrey’s head out of Thomas’ grasp, the pair of them scuffling on the ground at Florence’s feet. 

“They’ll do that,” she agreed, while Robin howled in triumph and held Humphrey’s head aloft, leaving Thomas a disgruntled heap on the crazy paving. 

It had taken just over a week for the Captain to sufficiently overcome his mortification to be able to look Alison in the eye. He’d found her in the Green Study, one morning, where she was hiding from Kitty while pretending to answer emails, making her way steadily through a packet of custard creams.

“Alison?” he called, on the other side of the closed door, and she shoved almost an entire biscuit into her mouth in surprise.

“Hang on!” she shouted. The Captain materialised through the door with a familiar frown on his face, the swagger stick tucked under his arm, as usual. "Sorry,” she said, around a mouthful of crumbs. “Biscuit-related emergency.”

“Ah,” he said, uncertainly. “Yes.”

“What can I help you with?” Alison asked, once she’d swallowed the rest of the custard cream.

“A request, relating to the talking books,” he said. 

“Oh,” she said, pleased. “Are you and Pat finally listening to _The Lord of the Rings_?”

The Captain cleared his throat and looked remarkably as though he would be grateful to be able to spontaneously combust. “Not yet. That is, he - ah. Patrick would like you to ‘download’ _Captain Corelli’s Mandolin_ onto my listening device. I understand it’s very, ah. Very moving.”

“I understand it is,” Alison agreed, grinning at him. 

“Good lord, look at the time,” the Captain had said, stepping backwards through the door without bothering to check the clock. “As you were, Alison.”

On her way to the library in search of Fanny’s pictures, Alison paused beneath the May bough they’d hung above the mantlepiece in the drawing room. Its flowers and leaves had shrivelled but most still clung to the branches. Mary insisted that the bough be burned on a bonfire at midsummer, so Alison had agreed to leave it hanging there by its harness of string, sellotape and, at Kitty’s behest, a colourful array of ribbons. It made her smile, to see it, and it seemed to have woven a lucky charm over the season’s first wedding, so Alison was a firm convert to the importance of bringing in the may. She realised, suddenly, gazing up at the bow Kitty had told her to tie, hanging on the bough Mary had told her to cut, that they’d started a new tradition together, traipsing about in the woods on May Day morning. 

She went up the stairs two at a time and realised she was whistling to herself, the same four lines of ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’ that the Captain always hummed when he managed to beat Robin to all the answers in the _Times_ weekend crossword.

The library was occupied, she realised, as soon as she pushed open the door; she could hear a low murmur of conversation and the tinny sound of _The Krypton Factor_ emanating from laptop speakers. She’d wondered where they’d got to; Julian must have set them up with a playlist on YouTube before he came down to the garden. She was pleased every time Julian quietly lent them his support, like this, because it made her suspect a heart had once beaten somewhere beneath his reptilian exterior; it was a feeling she was unaccustomed to experiencing in conjunction with thoughts of Julian. It was a good job he usually ruined it by making off-colour jokes about the Village People. 

She paused in the doorway and cleared her throat, then made sure she bumped into a bookshelf and knocked a particularly heavy book to the floor. 

“Whoops!” she called, picking it up, before she proceeded any further. “How clumsy of me!”

By the time she rounded the shelves, Pat was sitting on the sofa, leaning against one arm of it with an air of exaggerated nonchalance. On the laptop screen, Gordon Burns was holding up a car number plate and explaining the parameters of the contestants’ next task **6**. The Captain spoiled the picture by looming awkwardly behind the sofa, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing an expression so suspicious it made Kitty’s attempts to fib about whether or not she still occasionally crept into Alison and Mike’s bedroom in the middle of the night in defiance of Alison’s explicit instructions, look like a masterclass in deception.

“Alison!” said Pat, rather too loudly. “We thought - I mean, I thought everyone was outside, enjoying the sunshine!”

“Fanny remembered some family photos she thinks might be hidden in a drawer. We were going to look at them this evening and see if anyone recognises them.” She glanced at the Captain out of the corner of her eye. The twitching of his moustache suggested that, if ghosts had been capable of blushing, he would have been the colour of ripe tomatoes. "Everything alright in here?"

“Tickety-boo, thank you,” the Captain said firmly, resolutely avoiding her gaze. “Why shouldn’t it be?"

Pat glanced up at him and a small, fond smile crept onto his face. He reached behind him and took the Captain’s hand in his own, lifting it to place it gently on his shoulder, covering it with his own. To Alison’s astonishment, the Captain left it there, incriminating and familiar as it was, though his left eye twitched violently. He was apparently so horrified as to be incapable of speech. “Everything’s fine,” said Pat. "Isn’t it, Alison?”

The Captain appeared to be fighting his internal battle again. Slowly, incrementally, his fingers twitched in a minute squeeze of reassurance. Pat’s smile became a brilliant, beaming thing.

“Everything’s brilliant,” Alison said, smiling widely to match. “Really brilliant. Here they are!” she said, grabbing the first lot of sepia-tinged photos she found, after a cursory rummage in the desk drawer. “I’ll let you get on."

As she turned to leave, the Captain cleared his throat. His hand was still on Pat’s shoulder, a gesture that seemed at once proud and petrified, as though he were concerned that the moment he moved, even the slightest bit, he might burst into flames. His face wore an expression of transcendent fear. He made a hemming noise and cleared his throat a second time. 

“Thank you, Alison,” he said, with tight sincerity.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and left them to it.

* * *

**[1]** Glad to be Gay by the Tom Robinson Band, as performed at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, 1979.

 **[2]** Wham! at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1983. The scout troop had won a competition none of them could remember entering; Pat had been very excited to go backstage and shake hands with Pepsi and Shirley.

 **[3]** George V, Great Britain’s most famous philatelist.

 **[4]** Michael Fish and the great storm of 1987.

 **[5]** Horace de Vere Cole, a man who would probably have described himself as ‘a hoot’, and whose friends and family tended to refer to him as a nuisance.

 **[6]** The Krypton Factor, Granada TV, 1977-1995.


End file.
